I’ve spent the last two days in Silicon Valley. It evokes a strange mix of emotions in me every time. My first visit was in high school, supposedly to look at Stanford but mostly to hang out with my cool older cousin. Not only did he let me see an R-rated movie, but he had his own startup with office space and some really smart co-founders. They all talked with a confidence, intelligence, and zeal that was every bit as powerful as missionary.
Today, many years later, it is awe-inspiring to realize how much cultural change has come out of these nondescript buildings. Legendary names appear fastened to normal brick buildings: Apple, Google, Yahoo, Craigslist, Facebook. And that’s also what is so strange: the overall ordinariness of it all. Anywhere else in the country it would be indistinguishable from strip mall suburbia. Except maybe a little cleaner, and with more sports cars. The people don’t look extraordinary at all, but the buzz I felt in a Palo Alto ice cream shop today was palpable.