Silicon Valley Revisited

Thought provoking article on rediff.......

"A year ago, totally new in these parts, I wrote my first rediff column titled Sounding silly in Silicon Valley. It did capture my state of befuddlement then about not only technology, but stratospheric success, dazzling wizardry and the brains to riches story of many Indians in the IT industry which surrounded me in my new job in San Francisco.

A year is a long time in Silicon Valley where today's discoveries in technology render obsolete yesterday's wonders, new business models create stock market sensations or disasters, companies rise and crumble, and millions are made or lost if not in a click, then in a week.

A year is a short time, however, for someone like me untutored in the IITs or the IIMs to truly understand all this. But it is perhaps sufficient to gain some insights. I have no claim to write today on 'Making sense of Silicon Valley', but I hope that frequent visits, many encounters, and professional requirements have made me if not wise, at least less silly. Hence this 'revisit' to decode the current happenings in the Silicon valley, the high technology centre of the world, made doubly interesting for us because of the significant Indian connection.

Yes, one thing is still true from my old article, the Indian connection. Names of Bangalore and increasingly Hyderabad, Chennai and Gurgaon have become if not household at least 'corporatehold' words in the Silicon Valley, just as in the myriad call centers, IT parks and R&D units that now dot the Indian landscape, the names of the local shrines here -- Intel, Google, Sun, and Cisco -- are constantly invoked. Not only the symbiotic link, as the management jargon has it, but there is a growing perception that it is useful to factor India while weighing the future options and opportunities in many areas of high-technology.

One of the interesting questions is: What makes Silicon Valley what it is, a frontier locale for high technologies? The technologies being hatched and nurtured today cover not only IT but increasingly Bio, Nano, Web, and Communications. How did this particular landscape develop as a 'habitat' for technological innovation and creativity? I have been asking pundits."

Silicon Valley Revisited