Re: <nettime> Silicon Valley, five years after

[ed phillips <ed@cronos.net>]

Steve,

Thanks for posting this to nettime. It is interesting to see you
mention the dotcom period now. I've been reading Keith Hart's The Hitman's
Dilemna and some other interesting remarks by Keith and one with which
I think I concur is that Bay Area markets and money and individual
economic "actors" in the Bay Area and in the U.S. generally are that
much more quick to to turn to new markets, new money. ascribe it to
what you will, the absence of a welfare net, or some sui generis dynamism.

I look and wonder at people I see as I ride my bike around San
Francisco, how are these people getting their green? The renters
market here stabilized a little but the home buyer's market has gone
through the roof. The building and real estate industries are
booming. Professional services are just as expensive as
ever. etc. Programmers still get hired, for the same rates as before
the most stupid of the stupid money days of IPO fever, stabilized.
And things seem to have gradually picked up over the last two years.
The city is as expensive to live in as it ever was and has not fallen
off of any peak, in fact there is more wealth here than ever. 

The economy here has definitely shifted, as it did do dramatically
during the bust phase that lasted really a short time. We are in some
kind of wierd boom redux right now, or jobless recovery. People around
here don't seem to be overemployed, but where the hell do they get
their money? are they all growing weed in their basements or running a
yoga studio? certainly they aren't making their green from commercial
reuse of nettime postings! but just what are they up to? I see
something of a revenge of the hardhat, of the builder, of the core
engineering team perhaps.


One nettimer said that the Banking industry is doing well, whatever
that means. Also, let's not underestimate the stimulus of Defence and
Homeland Security spending in the Valley. Is anyone tracking that?
I do have anecdotal evidence of people in the Embedded Systems world
are much in demand with contracts galore and also in the visualization
software industries, and in data mining, networking, etc.
It's obviously stimulating the D.C. area. That same nettimer mentioned
the gradual proving of ecommerce as well.


On Tue, Mar 15, 2005 at 04:08:32PM -0500, Steve Cisler wrote:

> San Jose, California. This past week has been a time
> to remember the  bursting of the dot.com (and some
> would say the Internet) bubble. Starting with a five
> part series in the San Jose Mercury News, it was
> picked up by alternative papers, and of course local
> TV news teams. I saw a piece from the Guardian on this
> list. 
 <...>


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