The Secret History of Silicon Valley on HackerTube: recommended by 5 Hacker News commenters across 5 separate months, 2008–2016.
talk · evergreen
Steve Blank tells how World War II, Stanford's Frederick Terman and military and intelligence agencies shaped the rise of Silicon Valley. The talk centers on the Cold War electronic warfare and signals intelligence work that seeded the region's tech industry.
HN recommends it as an eye-opening, once-secret history of where Silicon Valley came from, and cites it whenever the military roots of tech come up.
“This is an eye opening perspective on some history "hidden in plain sight" of the origins of Silicon Valley.”
11 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.
I just watched his entire presentation, which was better than his blog posts: ▶ this video absolutely brilliant and a must see. Steve's blog is great, but he also has a good presentation style thick with interesting content.
in “Starting Up Silicon Valley Style” · View on HN
Harry Truman once observed "the only surprises are the history you don't know." This is an eye opening perspective on some history "hidden in plain sight" of the origins of Silicon Valley. Video of a version of this talk given at Google is available here ▶ this video The most interesting aspect of the talk for me was a vision of "systems fighting systems" in an accelerated co-evolution.
in “Steve Blank Nov-20 Lunch @ SV Computer History Museum "Secret History of Silicon Valley"” · View on HN
Frederick Terman: [link] There's an excellent video on him around, I'll see if I can't turn that up. Here: "The Secret History of Silicon Valley", tech talk at Google: ▶ this video Briefly: UC Berkely and Stanford, each of which had (and have) excellent engineering deparments. Other colleges, universities, junior colleges, and public schools were from the 1950s through 1970s excellent. Most have been faltering since the 1980s. Moffet Airfield. Already established by WWI and home to airship activity. World War II. An immense industrial capacity built up, many defense industries, and a nascent technology cluster. Amazing weather. There's little else in the US, or anywhere in the world, which can compete. (For all the specific local boosters out there: I didn't say no places, I said "little else".) Cheap housing. Up through the 1970s, California had ample room to grow, and things didn't start getting particularly nuts until the 1980s and 1990s. Since 1995, it's simply been insane. Freeways. For a time it was possible to get around. That's no longer particularly the case. BART helps. Caltrain doesn't hurt too much. Both are entirely inadequate. The ability to work from anywhere is only about 10 years old. The need for tech industry is closer to 50-60 years old, and local efficiencies, economies of scale, job-mobility, etc., all happen and matter.
in “Why California is so expensive: It’s not just the weather, it’s the regulation” · View on HN
Great talk about Silicon Valley history: ▶ this video I watched this talk a long time ago, but I just noticed the name is Steve Blank, the "customer development" guy, and I have one of his books. That's pretty cool. [link]
in “Silicon Valley History” · View on HN
Steve Blank on the Secret History of Silicon Valley: ▶ this video History of electronic warfare -- very surprising, recently declassified stuff. Plus the history of Silicon Valley itself, from a pro-valley perspective.
in “Ask HN: What documentaries are worth watching?” · View on HN
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're not condoning their actions, but in case you need a more clear example of where this paradigm breaks down: IBM & Nazi Germany, Nazi Germany in general, etc. Ironically, sillicon valley came into existence building military SIGINT/ELINT systems for the cold war.[0] [0] ▶ this video
in “XKeyscore: NSA program collects 'nearly everything a user does on the internet'” · View on HN
I really don't understand the over fixation on Silicon Valley. There's a lot of history behind it: ▶ this video
in “Why One of Silicon Valley’s Savviest Investors Has Shut His Wallet” · View on HN
It's fairly traditional for American individuals/corporations that benefit from government assistance to fight against the same when it applies to others e.g. "deregulation" is usually just re-regulation that favors the incumbents. In this case he's also rewriting the history of Silicon Valley to not be an offshoot of the tax funded military: The Secret History of Silicon Valley ▶ this video
in “Myhrvold: Subsidies Stymie Wind and Solar Innovation - Bloomberg” · View on HN
"Military service holds a vaulted position in Israeli’s entrepreneurial culture. Many start up founders attribute their success to those post-adolescent years spent following orders and memorizing technical manuals in specialized army units." Unfortunately this only seems to work in Israel. From a Scandinavian perspective, and personal experience in the Finnish Defence Forces, our conscription and entrepreneurship seem to have nothing to do with each other. Our service does provide connections, but they don't readily turn into businesses. Perhaps because there is nothing like the current threats around Israel. Thus there is less procurement etc. Finland's and Israel's aerospace/weapons industries have surprisingly much common history. We had the leg up after WW2 until about 80's. Tampella (mostly known for grenade launchers) and other Finnish manufacturers provided quite many designs (for example Israel's Galil rifle was based on a design licensed from Finland) and consulted in the development of Israel's armament industry. Nowadays the tables have turned - Finland buys a lot of defense materiel from Israel. Scandinavian countries already have quite selective conscription. International op requirements and cutbacks seem to be leading to rapid professionalization (very apparent in Sweden). Soon Finland could be the only N. European country with mandatory conscription, since it's the only non-Nato country which borders Russia. Military & entrepreneurship: Very interesting pair.
in “It’s Silicon Valley or the Israeli Army for This Young Entrepreneur” · View on HN
There would be records of the radar track in the computers of the Aegis cruisers in the task force. There may well be evidence of the launch captured by satellites. ELINT is very powerful, and the US intelligence agencies have been at this game since before WWII. Their sneakiness boggles the mind! They were using signals bounced off of the moon to spy on Soviet equipment, and disguised the whole thing as radio astronomy! ▶ this video If you are going to go up against the US defense establishment, you'd better be damned sure you know what you're doing. If I were the US, facing such an asymmetric threat, I'd keep most of my carrier groups around for the short term as a boondoggle, then come up with my own novel threat against my opponent's shipping. (Sub launched cruise missiles, or mines? The advanced 21st century version, of course.)
in “How the United States Lost the Naval War of 2015” · View on HN
Ironically, according to Steve, the people who developed the above are responsible for Silicon Valley. ▶ this video
in “Steve Blank: Gravity Will be Turned Off” · View on HN