As pundits and industry insiders line up to say farewell to the dream of the Bay Area and the mythos that accompanies it, Silicon Valley veterans who have weathered previous storms remain skeptical much will change. After all, the cradle of innovation on California’s coast has already survived multiple major downturns, including the dot-com crash of the late 90s and the financial crisis of 2008.
Even before those crises, however, some felt that the region’s hyper growth was unsustainable. In 1993, AltaVista creator Paul Flaherty predicted the death of Silicon Valley as a central innovation hub, arguing “the cost of housing and office space has spiralled out of control.”
Of course each prediction has been proven wrong, making it difficult to imagine the coronavirus as the true “beginning of the end” for Silicon Valley as we know it. Then again, this time things are different. Now tech workers are being given a choice that previously wasn’t offered to them: leaving the…
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Source : fastcompany.com
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