Silicon Valley has achieved an almost mythical status in both modern American popular culture as well as the annals of world economic history, write Michael Corey and Don Sullivan in a new Big Data Quarterly article.
Located south of San Francisco, the name "Silicon Valley" was coined in the early 1970s due to the volume of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers in the area. Today, the valley is synonymous with technology innovation and venture capital: two mighty forces of change.The great majority of American economic growth over the past 5 decades has been as a direct or indirect result of an omnipresent technology explosion. However, the over-simplification of Silicon Valley as a physical location belies a misunderstanding of the depth and breadth of contributions to this magnificent and ubiquitous technology upheaval. When using the moniker “Silicon Valley,” we should recognize that, as the number of technology centers across the U.S. increases in numbers, we are actually referring to a mindset as much as a place and to an entrepreneurial approach to life as much as a set of adjacent zip codes.
In truth, Silicon Valley spans the continent, as pervasive in historic eastern cities as it is embedded in New Age Pacific-Northwest locations. It permeates a multitude of lesser-known locales of the Deep South as well as the classic American towns that originally made America the greatest economic colossus that the world has ever seen. Let’s explore six additional locations that are actually connected through the ephemeral fabric of this technological titan that we call Silicon Valley.
Read on here.