Let me tell you what Silicon Valley is like: the mountain edges of the valley rise up like the lip of a great big copper-bottomed frying pan of overpriced Revere Ware, and on the high heat of burning money everything and everyone in there melts into a boiling, spattering, frenetic stew. Boston is like a nicely arranged four-food-group meal on Sunday china, and Seattle is a huge hunk of Microsoft barbecue with a few thawed peas rolling off the paper plate, but Silicon Valley, California, is not just a stew, it's a stew that never comes off the gas heat. The juices meld, and the histories intertwine, and it's spiced up with high achievers from every nook of the world. Heat waffles off the ground, distorting it all into an earth-toned prism. Entangled superexpressways pass over industrial megaparks and shady 3BR/2BA ranch-style homes and provide occasional vistas of scorched tan acreage protected as natural habitants for scrappy, trash-can-scrounging coyotes. The tallest landmarks are power towers and phone poles. The real work is done in silence, sitting in cubicles, staring at screens. Everyone is attempting to make things that have not existed before.
- Po Bronson, The Nudist on the Last Shift, pp.214-215
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