Lynne's Take on Tech

The most recent attack on women and minorities in Silicon Valley has arisen unexpectedly from Google. Mounted by an anonymous Google engineer as a “manifesto”, it presents no facts, regurgitates disproven theories on the “biology” of men and women and, most tellingly, blames diversity for upper management’s cancellation of underperforming products at Google.

There are a lot of women who have worked on technology projects in SV over the years (me included), but you wouldn’t know it because no one writes about it, so no one believes that it happened even though this is a young industry and most of us are still alive. That missing piece of the story leads to the notion that women have not had any involvement in any technology and it’s a man’s world. It’s an absurd notion.

Whenever one sees these attitudes one also sees history has been deconstructed to focus only on one person at the expense of others – unless earlier in the history of the field there were key women who could not be deconstructed, like physics has Curie and Meitner. Those who control the information – tech journalists, writers and amateur enthusiasts – have had an almost laser-focus on men. Why?  Continue reading Is Google Just Another Uber Bro? Unraveling the Tangled Silicon Valley Tech Geek Myth

After a non-brief hiatus where health matters intersected with work matters, I’m back to writing about technology, policy, people and innovation in Silicon Valley.

I’ve always lived in Silicon Valley. I was born in Fremont, got my physics degree at UC Berkeley, and have worked at and co-founded several tech companies here. I road my bike through orchards and fields now filled with homes and shops. I drove 2 lane roads now turned into always busy expressways. I went to school with people who have gone on to successful careers, even reshaping industries… and some who are no longer alive.

I’ve lived in Los Gatos for the last two decades. It’s a nice town (really and literally, the Town of Los Gatos), with a splendid library, just out-of-the-way enough to participate in Silicon Valley without enduring too much of the transitory madness of chimerical tech trends.

It’s an easy drive to all those places that matter, although those places have changed too. What was hot is soon not. Money changes hands, or vanishes into pockets. And the must-hear pitch is as quickly forgotten as yesterday’s weather.

There are patterns and anti-patterns to Silicon Valley, this Valley of Heart’s Delight. But now the heart is made of silicon and transistors and zeros and ones. It beats in picoseconds through cores of processors and devices. Thoughts and dreams and desires, both subtle and base, are accessible with a touch.

A. C. Clarke said “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”. Perhaps this is why the gap between science and public policy, education and superstition has grown in the United States. This is a threat to Silicon Valley innovation and national security. 

Continue reading Hello world!