[inaudible conversations] >> and now on booktv, silicon valley historian leslie berlin described the growth of the major technology industries including personal computing, video games and biotechnology. she's introduced by and in conversation with marguerite gong hancock, the founding executive director of the computer history museum's exponential center. >> in an information age version of florence and the renaissance during 1969-18976 -- 1976 and within the space of just 35 square miles, there was a big bang here in silicon valley. the valley was the epicenter of, quote, the most significant and

diverse burst of technological innovation of the past 150 years, writes historian leslie berlin. quote, five major industries were born; personal computing, video games, advanced semiconductor logic, modern venture capital and biotechnology. unquote. the valley brought to life new iconic companies including apple, atari, genentech and major venture firms. berlin spent six years doing research with many of the unsung heroes of this era behind these landmark developments and that set in motion these ripple effects which have literally changed the world. tonight she joins us to discuss her new book, "troublemakers: silicon valley's coming of age." this side of the stage we're really pleased to present a small exhibit just for you tonight of artifacts related to each of the seven silicon valley trouble merricks featured in -- troublemakers featured in her book.

and we're very thrilled to have several of the reimaginer troublemakers -- remarkable troublemakers with us tonight. so, al, mike and sandy, would you please stand and be recognized. [applause] thank you. so to tell the stories of these remarkable people and others is leslie berlin. leslie is the project historian for the silicon valley archives at stanford university. she's been a fellow at stanford center for advanced studies and behavioral sciences and on the advisory committee for the -- [inaudible] center at sewn january's national museum of american history. to introduce her i'd like to share, as is our tradition, five numbers. so 35 square miles were the ones that changed the world as described in her book. 14 wild years chronicled. 2 books published. 7 valley upstarts profiled in

"troublemakers" and two children. please join me in giving a very warm welcome to leslie berlin. [applause] great to have you. >> thank you. >> so, leslie, really delighted to have you here at the museum. >> thank you. >> and enjoyed reading "the troublemakers." so you've been a chronicler of the valley's history for two decades, and you often quote steve jobs who says you can't really understand what's going on unless you understand what came before. for a place that's focused so much on creating the future, why is silicon valley history important? >> well, i mean, it's hard to outspeak steve jobs on that. so i do believe that you can't understand what's happening today without understanding what came before, but more importantly or as important at

least is that silicon valley has this remarkable advantage which is that the history is still here. the people, i mean, in this room and all over this community are here and quite accessible. and i think that the young entrepreneurs who know what's up, they come and try to talk to the people who are living here who have done this before. bob taylor, who i talk about in my book who is the person who convinced the the president of defense -- the department of defense to start the ash net that became the internet and ran the computer science lab at xerox park which is one of the two labs that developed the technology that so knocked steve jobs' socks off in 1979, you know, taylor told me that mark zuckerberg came up to try to understand, said, well, how to

you manage innovation? and this is something that i think right here for us to learn, that's such an advantage to have those mentors and people who have done it before right here. >> so these people are are all around us -- are all around us, and how did you choose this particular time period to focus on for this book? >> you know, i did something really old-fashioned which is i took out a sheet of paper, and i drew a timeline, and i started putting little dots on it for important things that happened. and there was just this incredible convergence during this period of time, and because in addition to everything that marguerite talked about with the birth of biotech and modern venture capital and personal computing and video games and advanced semiconductor logic, i mean, at the same time this is sort of the birth of the celebrity entrepreneur.

this is the time that silicon valley launches two of its most important lobbying organizations that really kind of set this motion what we see today with the tight connections between d.c. and silicon valley, and it was just incredible. this was when stanford starts its office for technology licensing. ..

>> mostly engineers. and now suddenly exploding on the scene and i really wanted to tell that story and the challenge became how do you tell a story that is that complex with so many moving parts? >> we talked earlier when you were talking about the process you have this unusual style to weave together individuals. how do you come to that unravel what is happening? >> i sweated blood. that you would read it just to give you an overview, i get seven individuals and a look

at what they are doing with this window of time. i figured right about person a and person b and what quickly became apparent i was losing the really cool part of the story is how all of this intersected somebody like regis pop-up who introduced first the microprocessor to the world and the personal computer than biotech industry. and if i were just telling the story as a silo you would not get that. or don valentine keeps showing up. so i really needed to find a way to do that. the way the book is structured as it looks at it. of time to say here is what

each person is doing and i offer a window into what is happening into silicon valley and then i jump to the next window in time and show what everyone is doing that enables me where they are crossing and interweaving. >> looking from the outside with those heroic individuals we started talking about steve jobs but many were not household names. >> i have three criteria. number one, the person had to be important or teach us something important the valley. number two, they had to have a truly interesting story. for fun i almost exclusively

read fiction and with this narrative arc something as complicated as this technology with the notion of building a company to take a person to tell their story i needed people who had interesting stories and it was important to have people that were not as well known. i talk about this party that i went to a long time ago i think he was the cio of a tech company with a very, very very famous celebrities ceo. this person started to sing a little song the words were i did all the work and he got all the credit. [laughter] and i think innovation is a team sport.

it is the baseball game because anyone who was at that game you step on the bag at the last minute and the catcher makes his perfectly calibrated call but the only thing that goes through the history books is the picture through a perfect game but if anybody is exceeded how they were succeeding it was a team effort. i really wanted a way to tell the story of the people who were just outside the spotlight without whom they would not be there. >> which one do you want to start with? >> i will tell the story of

mike. it is dangerous when they are sitting in the audience because they could jump up and correct you. a lot of people in this room know who mike is. as i have gone around two other places they know who mike is. or some don't fit if they know the founding of apple they know of the in the garage 1976. what they don't know is there was somebody else who own one third of apple and that was mike. the way his story had come to me luckily we got friendly after my first book. so since i do a lot of history, i knew that there

were so many of these little startup computer companies all over the valley and all over the country. and they all had their brilliant engineers. maybe not as perhaps as brilliant as jobs or t17. but he would say there were a lot of people and that is true but one of those was mike. if you look at apple 1976, steve jobs was 21 years old. seventeen months of business experience in his entire life working as a tech at atari. and steve wozniak wanted to stay as an engineer hewlett-packard. he didn't want to start a company so how did they end up

the youngest company to hit the fortune 500? because mike came in and brought with him a cadre of people from the microchip industry including jean carter who i know is here. if you look at apple as one. when they went public good night, you have the president, vp of manufacturing, vp marketing, vp sales, cfo, vp hr. several major investors like sequoia. all brought in by mike. brilliant connections through the semi conductor industry and to me that is a story that is remarkable that people did not know that. it goes back to the importance

building on what came before so how foolish would that have been for those two to say we will do it ourselves because everybody else is tried and they didn't have success. >> the theme throughout your book is passing the baton to this inter generational connection. can you say how that has happened in the valley? >> that term passing the baton is another steve jobs term from his commencement address. everybody glides right over but he talks about when he was fired from apple in 1985 he got on the phone and apologized for what he called dropping the baton and really had a sense of this baton

being passed from generation to generation. he passed it forward. mark zuckerberg considers him a mentor. he talked with google founders, he did pay it forward but bob noyce called it restocking the stream that i fished from. that is something that really motivates, of course there are financial incentives but motivates those angel investors and venture capitalists to pay back into the system what you got out of it. that has happened a number of ways. formal ways through formal investment or through hiring people. there have been informal

networks of people taking other people under their wing. one of the nicest things anybody said to me was that the problem with the analogy is there is one baton. i can't go to mark zuckerberg in say give me the baton. this person said your book can be a baton for people. i really like that idea and it is incumbent on us to figure out to figure out the valley's great strength which is handing things off within a tight network. how do we make sure that people that are in this network right now who are able to get folded into the stream? >> being at the center of a very important network so

talking about bob taylor, tell us about his role how you developed that story and how that affected the valley - this is something i am a little ashamed to admit now because anybody knows the inside story would say how does somebody with the phd not know? but i really had not been aware how tight the ties were between the arpanet and the birth of the personal computer industry. i didn't appreciate so many of the same people got their funding that helped to develop the arpanet then turned around and went to places like xerox park and launched the personal computer revolution. in some sense bob was in an

incredible way to tell the story getting back to my point what he did was undeniably important. to start the arpanet, run the computer science lab and then his group develops one of the key researchers one of the most important people behind altavista which is the first really great search engine several years before google get started. very unknown. when i did a survey it is very rare for hand to go up. if there is one thing i hope this book changes is that. but what a story. he has a masters degree in psychology from the university

of texas and ends up responsible for a cadre of some of them are computer science phd but this was before phd's in computer science were common. and taylor was in charge and the caliber of these people were so extraordinary that the president of mit worried out loud about the possibility of staffing academic computer science department anybody they would want to work was already working for bob. and the story how somebody described him as a concert pianist without fingers. it is an incredible analogy. i talked to people for this

book sometimes i feel i should just tape -- put on the tape recorder. just because they are so smart. but that line captures it. he could hear the term distributed computing but yet could not do it himself. he was able to find the people to get that moving forward but yet, an amazing person to work for and a very difficult person to work for you. that makes for an incredible story. >> so far we have talked about the great men and it is important we include extraordinary women part of the story. sandy took the company the

first want to take a tech company public so tell us about her story and how it weaves together. >> sure. a lot of people say about sandy it is so good you included a woman. but what i included was a software entrepreneur. that is what i was interested in. i wanted to tell sandy story because she was an example of somebody who made this work outside of the networks we talk about. she didn't have don valentine helping her out from the beginning. her startup story is not i was in a garage but i was at my kitchen table. gender definitely is a part of this story. she was a double outsider.

yes as a woman that she was selling software at a time no one knew what software was. people seriously asked bob taylor from the dod how much does the software way? they had no idea. larry ellison tells the story to get venture capital for oracle. actually oracle has several cofounders. [laughter] larry tells the story basically being shown the door since the word software came out of his mouth and have the secretary check his bag to make sure he had installed a copy of business week on his way out.

it was a shady operation so because she is operating in this world of the unknown product and a woman she loves to tell the story people thought she was selling lingerie. [laughter] she bootstrapped her way up. that is an incredible story because that is part of the way things happen in silicon valley and what i wanted to tell. >> of course there are reasons to look again at how women are leading and have opportunities and have opportunities talk about breast enhancement and other things not for sandy but

that was the culture at the time. it may surprise people how women were viewed at the time. >> this has been very interesting to talk about because people come i have been asked some strange and hard questions one person asked silicon valley, good or evil? [laughter] and the question i am asked about gender is was it better or worse back then? but you cannot answer that question simply so i talked to a number of women for this book. of course font is someone else she started out when the book opens she is 12 years old. she is working in the orchards near her home near cupertino california.

she ends up immediately after high school getting a job on the manufacturing line another vitally important silicon valley companies people don't know about now. so this was exciting to talk about. she decided she cannot stand to be on the manufacturing line anymore. i have to land behind the desk and essentially worked for a company that was acquired but i talked to a lot of women and the story is very complex because there were women programmers and videogame designers but biology in general had a lot of women

with visions of relative power. so their colleagues generally treated them as equals or one of the boys. but at the same time on the outside. still operating in a remarkably sexist world on the level. 1974 before a woman if she was married could even get a credit card without her husband's approval. 1980 before the eeoc recognize sexual harassment in the workplace. this is an environment that accompany new better and then published a short story that was flat-out pornographic about abreast enhancing

machine in the pages of your company newsletter. the stories that i would hear that they were subjected to i thought that was the most terrible sexual harassment but the perspective was no. he was just a jerk or this is just what happens. so from the inside they were treated as equals but sandy was in charge so that was a logical way for women to go at the time. on the other hand i could name these women. and also what was accepted as normal was impossible to imagine now. so of course it is better now than it used to be. the way that it will get better still is we need to

have more women and underrepresented minorities in positions of authority with the ability to hire and fire and control budgets. that is how change happens. b-17 so now talk about what you build out of atari of the counterculture. >> so the atari story it opens with him with tear gas canisters going off working at

a tv repair shop and as an aside that berkeley has a lot to do with the con valley. and the core of the computer science lab so the story starts with the whole battle and destroy the area faced as a whole and the reason i do that is because it is an important part of al's story and also dramatic and terrifying anti- vietnam attitude was important to

establish the valley but largely because a lot of the people ended up going to companies like atari if you were a graphic spurt a logical place for you to go was a defense contractor with a form of simulation but instead ended up with companies like atari and on a cultural level when i think what has happened at this time to have incredibly powerful technology and then it brings out the first microprocessor you can

see this incredibly powerful technology fall into the hands of people and i really think that innovation around the area but what i like about how story is everybody knows the story of nolan and he was the idea guy is that fair to say? he had real engineering skills. that means incredibly heavily to make all of this work and is very generous and talking about this because he feels that nolan needed him to build this and he needed nolan to push him that they thought

were completely absurd. doing this just for the pleasure to have this blowup in my face. and it works. it is like the dog caught the car. now what do you do? i like that story because it happened with the complementary skill set. >> we still have to talk about bob swanson. let's introduce him. >> and his story is folded into the framers that i was

telling you about. number of the biotech industry the way the overlap happen with the whole idea would be the first to tell you they are the chemical engineer they didn't know what that meant to build in this universe talking about going on vacation biology 101. nonetheless he felt this technology to the semi conductor industry. and really had to battle to work through the question the

purpose of a university? how do you have a place that is to increase the public knowledge and at the same time patent some of your ideas? and only pursuing profitable research? so at the same time bob swanson just got fired and is literally living on welfare to interest people and basically goes down a list to say do you

think we could make any money? and they keep hanging up on him so that is a really interesting story because they were so persistent and really went into this without any idea of how to build a biotech company. they ended up building a company that in some ways was a precursor to the virtual corporation that was tom's idea. >> thanks for introducing us to the main characters of the story and now look at the

broader stage and the ecosystem that is happening with venture capital. . . . . >> to put your money, to send your the best and brightest from various universities, people who want to make their mark on the valley, excuse me, on the planet but also people who just want to make money, you know? all come here now. and, of course, there have always been people here who just want to make money. i don't want to paint it where there used to be this golden age

where everything was idealistic and power to the people, because it's not. i think that's an easy trap to fall into, and i don't want to fall into it. i think, you know, i'm not the first person to say that there's an enormous amount of money chasing, you know, some ideas. and that, you know, it means that we're seeing things get funded that sometimes it's not easy to understand exactly why. [laughter] >> very diplomatic. another then and now question. in the book today silicon valley, you could say, has a contentious relationship, you could say, somewhat with government, airbnb, regulators and others. but that wasn't the case in the time period you talked about. can you talk about the role of government then and how you compare that with the valley and silicon valley and washington now? >> yeah, sure.

so the federal government was vitally important in launching the valley. you know, 100%, literally 100% of the early microchips went to defense uses. the biggest employer out here was lockheed which was a major defense contractor. sill vain ya hughes, this was vitally important to getting the valley started. and in some sense, the federal government acted as -- through its basic research contract, sort of as an early venture capitalist in a lot of ways except not necessarily expecting a return, which is always nice. [laughter] and i think that the other thing that i just want to point out, and it's a little bit of a tangent from the government but while i'm thinking about it, talking about places like lockheed, i think that it's a

misperception of the valley that what made the valley was start-ups and also people who say that the spirit of the valley is lost today because there's so many big companies. because time and again the way the small companies got started was that the founders came out to work for the big companies. and so i just want to throw that out there as something to bear in mind. so of after that first splash sort of in the '50s and '60s where the federal government was acting as this -- in all the ways i just described, in the 1970s what started to happen was the valley realized, oh, federal government actually has some real impact on how our lives are lived. and there was two key pieces of legislation that i won't go into in great depth, but let's just -- one was a capital gains tax cut, and the other was a

change in the laws about who could invest, what pension funds were allowed to invest in. and those were relaxed. and suddenly it was possible to invest in very high risk companies. and that just, the amount of venture capital that rushed into the valley was enormous. and throughout this time the valley really was seen as kind of the golden child of the golden state. and the part of the semiconductor industry, for example, could make legitimate arguments about their importance not only to the economy, but to national security that led to really significant legislation and defensive moveses against japanese imports -- moves against japanese imports, for example. and as you keep going up, you begin to see a little bit of

question. so the microsoft trials at the end of the '90s is a good example of how things start to shift. but still, by and large, yea, silicon valley, is the attitude from d.c. but now, whoa. it's really different. the valley's biggest companies are in the crosshairs of both the left who see them as too powerful and concentrated and the right who see them as too left-leaning. and it's a tough place to be. and i think that some of the questions that are being raised are important and really, really, really tough. like, okay, so we have a fake news problem. we clearly have a fake news problem. but who gets to decide what's fake? i mean, are we going to ask mark zuckerberg and sheryl sandberg to arbitrate for us all as to what is fake news? i mean, that's not the solution. are we going to crowd source

what is fake -- that's not going to work. that's part of the problem, we can't even agree on what is real news or fake news right now. i mean, everyone thinks they know, but i'm just saying there are two very different perspectives on that. so i don't know where that's going to go, but i can say that i've watched decade after decade after decade after decade people talking about what's going to kill silicon valley. and it was going to be, you know, the oil shocks were going to kill silicon valley, the japanese competition was going to kill silicon valley, the y2k was going to kill silicon valley, you know in the dot.com bust, china and india. and the valley just kind of keeps going on. this is the first time that i've heard people saying, huh, i wonder if we kind of want silicon valley to die a little bit? is it too powerful? and that's something new. that really is categorically different from anything we've

seen before, and i think it's a reflection of people coming to realize, you know what, it's a reflection of your phones. people have come to realize that, my god, like, this is my life, you know what i mean? [laughter] this thing knows where i am, who are my friends,who i love, what are places i go to, you know? it sees my pictures. it's, you know, it knows a lot. it knows about your work life, it knows about your banks, and that i think is what is making people say, wait a second, who's behind all this? >> i'd like to go back to what you were just talking about this incredible track record of reinvention. even despite saying it's going to die and fail, what do you think is that secret sauce of the valley's regeneration? >> so i would point to, first of all, that baton pass. i think the most important thing i would point to is immigrants.

the valley, even at the time i'm looking at this in book, already the percentage of the population in the valley that was born outside the country is running at about twice the u.s. as a whole. now the statistics that i've seen out of actually joint venture silicon valley, their report on the valley, shows that of the people working in science and tech in the valley who are between the ages of 25-44, 66% of them, two-thirds of them, were born outside united states. and for the women it's at 76%. and this really speaks to one of the great secrets of the valley has been we have been able to draw from the population of the planet, you know, sort of the best and the brightest and the

sort of -- i mean, when you think of the kind of person who decides to pick up ask -- pick up and leave their country and go start someplace else? i mean, that kind of risk taking has been at the heart of the valley, you know, from the very, very beginning when people looked at, looked out here and saw nothing. why would anyone ever come here? and so right now, i mean, you have more than half of the unicorn companies, the companies privately held with a valuation of a billion dollars or more, more than half of them have a founder or co-founder born outside of the united states. and this, to me, has been the secret sauce. it's been this constant refresh in the system. and whenever people ask me what is the biggest threat to the valley, i always say it's screwing down that nozzle on immigration. and if you choose to couple that with cutting public education,

you know? i have no words. [laughter] [applause] >> risk taking comes, often, failure. and then sometimes resilience. tell us about some of -- not everything is up and to the right. that's the nature of being on the edge. what are some of the stories that you discovered during this time period not only were companies born and industries grown, but there was failure. can you tell us about some of that. >> well, sure. i mean, actually, i think for every single person i wrote about there was a moment when they were sure that it was all going to end. i mean, sandy, what, you gave yourself, like, x number of months and then forget it, i'm going to, you know, i'm going to go be a consultant, you know? this happened -- pardon? >> [inaudible] >> she's going to be a doctor. [laughter] and this, you know, i i mean

something that just i think -- it's really important to remember because, you know, this is a book as so many books are about the people who made it, it is incredibly hard. i mean, you know, andy grove told this story about when he went to intel from fairchild, and, i think it was a simon and garfunkel song called faking it? you know, i might be faking it, i'm not really making it, and he thought that song was directed at him. [laughter] and i think that having the ability to persist in the face of those just sort of intense self-doubts is a really important attribute of the people who have been successful. at the same time, it does require you not to be foolish about it and to understand, okay, i'm going to need to

redirect, you know? this isn't working this way. i need to do something different or even this is working this way. i mean, you know, the story of atari where the people inside atari started saying very early, okay, the 2600 -- which was the famous atari, the vcs that you could plug the cartridges into? this was absolutely the most incredible not just toy, but sort of like cultural phenomenon of the 1980s. and people inside -- the early '80s. people inside atari, al very loudly among them, were saying what today we would say, we need to disrupt ourselves. we need to have the next thing ready to go. and they couldn't get any traction. and so i think that, you know, sometimes the frustration is not actually due to yourself, and

that is, you know, another sad fact of doing this. and sometimes you have to decide, okay, i need to change how i'm making this happen. >> so this persistence we've talked about and also this resilience and flexibility, what are some of the other attributes that you've seen that made this set of troublemakers or other disrupters so successful? >> yeah. i mean, i think it's a strange combination of what i characterize as persistence and audacity. because i think often times the sort of most audacious people are the ones who, like, go jumping off a cliff, and then when they land, they don't really know what to do. and so what you need are the people who, or to be the person who has those kinds of huge risk-taking ideas but actually knows why you're doing it and what you're going to do if it works and it doesn't -- or it

doesn't work. and i think those are actually two really important attributes. well, i'll save another one because i know you're going to ask me about it at the end. >> okay. >> but i do think that that is quite important. the other thing that i would really point to is i think that right now, like this book is called "troublemakers," and i think that it's easy to mistake the means for the end sometimes. these people were making trouble not because that was their goal in life, but because there was something that they needed to do or wanted to do that they couldn't do inside these structures that existed at the time. so anytime you're pushing against the existing structures, you are making trouble for everyone around you. and i think that that recognizing that you aren't just

being reckless or trying to cause disruption for the sake of doing it -- which sometimes it seems like it's a badge of honor, you know, that people talk about now. this was just an incidental effect of the larger purpose that people had in mind. >> in the book you talk about sort of myths that you want to dispel of the great man approach to history that you want to counterbalance. lessons learned. what have we not talked about that you would like today's technologists or entrepreneurs to take away from your book? >> huh, that we have not already talked about ourselves tonight. well, i'm going to mention what i think is a really underappreciated aspect of people who really get things

done in the valley. which is humility. i think that very often the people who are truly excellent don't mistake their own egos for their products or their companies, and they just sort of understand that if what they're doing is great, they -- that is what really matters. and i think that that is an underappreciated, important aspect to being a successful entrepreneur. and also the other thing i'd really point to is knowing how to be a team, a team player. i think a venture capitalist who came up with the term unicorm

company, she famously -- unicorn company, she famously said no one likes to make money for a-holes. and i actually think that's true. and so i think not being a jerk, knowing how to be part of a team, remembering that most companies that you can name had two or more founder ors, and some, like fairchild, had eight founders. this is something you need to hearn to play with others. -- learn to play with others. >> well, let's get the audience into the conversation. the first one, first question is do you see similarities between bob taylor and steve jobs? both were charismatic, visionaries who inspired teams of people more technical than themselves to produce incredible innovations that changed computing. one in research, the other in products. but both could also be dismissive of those who didn't get it. similarities or differences. >> i think those are definite

similarities. they were actually also both adopted, and both told by their parents that they, unlike most kids who came to parents who just had to take, you know, whatever showed up, they had been chosen especially by their parents. and so there are some real analogies there. and i do think they were both absolutely brilliant people with no time to waste. >> here's a question, how to you fit bill gates into your story? sort of at the same time but decided to go to seattle instead of stay in the valley. >> that's right. yeah. i mean, he was from seattle. so this is actually something that my next book, whatever it is, i hope to address more. i keep my focus -- i mean, as i told you, this was a very complicated book. and so my focus is tight, tight, tight on the valley. i mean, obviously, when you talk about the birth of the ibm pc,

then i need to be talking about gates. and, of course, gates comes up in the early home brew meetings where he's talking about, hey, you guys need to pay for software and this sort of thing. but, you know, he is very much part of this generation. i don't talk about him exmissitly, but he is -- explicitly, but he is just right in there. i mean, a lot of these things that we just ticked through with having a co-founder, everything i've talked about, i think, would absolutely apply there as well. >> next question, how will the increasing gap between high specialized technological advancements such as self-driving cars or drones and global poverty and the need for very basic services play out? [laughter] >> don't ask a historian to predict the future. [laughter] what i can say is that this sort

of widening gap is something that prescient people have been finish i mean, i find a quote from john young in 1980 at hp talking about how this, not just this technology, but this place is going to completely bifurcate, and we're going to lose, we're going to lose the middle. and, i mean, we -- everything that was asked in that question is a valid point to make, and i would also point out the role that this technology plays now in developing economies. i mean, cell phones have been absolutely essential for microlending and all sorts of other things that are happening. i mean, i don't know how many of you ever go to the tech museum of innovation's awards in sort of the social realm and doing well for the world, and it -- but they are remarkable to see how this technology is being put

in the service of higher ideals. i was just talking to someone who is working on a not-for-profit to use block chain technology to certify the validity of elections in places like colombia. and so i think there's a lot -- you know, the technology is a tool, and we need to figure out all the different ways it can be used. >> recently you were telling me that you had been in a conversation with a really interesting young entrepreneur and thinking about what's next for the valley, are there threats to it. let's talk about what's, what you see developing now for silicon valley. >> well, i mean, i think that, you know, some of that, you know, we've already hit in terms of the threats that i see. i mean, as i said, foremost

among them is slowing down immigration. that, to me, is the one to be most worried about. and i think that in terms of what's coming next, and the valley has had this incredible ability to reinvent itself again and again and again. like, to me that's so much more of an interesting question than the question of why did silicon valley happen here. there have been regional economies forever. what's interesting is how on earth has the valley gone from sort of instrumentation to microchips to the stuff that i'm talking about in this book to the networking companies to, you know, cloud and social and mobile, and now we've got all this a.i. stuff happening. it's like again and again and again and again that sort of reinvention question. so do i, you know, do i think that the valley is going to continue? yes. do i know how?

no. [laughter] >> you are a historian, so it's -- and thank you for your views on really how history matters for what's happening today. this question comes from facebook live stream. what are your thoughts on places that are trying to copy silicon valley? is it possible to have a second silicon valley or other places that have their own distinct models? >> absolutely. they exist today. i mean, i think the notion that it's a zero sum game for regional tech economies is just flat out wrong. i mean, we were just talking about seattle, for heaven sake. i mean, seattle's incredible. and all over this country and all over the world you have these enclaves of innovation without which silicon valley would not exist. so i think -- i mean, i was just asked this question in my hometown of tulsa, oklahoma, how

do we become silicon valley. and i think that -- >> what did you say? >> well, i said, first of all, you need to figure out why you would want to become silicon valley. [laughter] you know? there is -- yeah. and the second thing that i pointed to, i mean, to take the tulsa example is you sort of need to figure out what is it that you're already doing that you're uniquely good at, and how do you parlay that into being part of this economy. so, i mean, in tulsa williams pipeline had all this pipeline that was empty, and someone had the idea of filling it with fiber optic cable. and that became wil, the el -- wiltel, and that was building on an existing infrastructure.

or corning, new york. that's where the gorilla glass in the iphones came from, right in and corning, new york, has been in the glass business since at least the 19th century. i don't actually know when it got started, i think the mid 19th century. and so those are places that have figured out, you know, we aren't going to copy silicon valley. silicon valley arose at a very specific time, a very specific place. it was this unique confluence of very sophisticated technology; namely, the transistor showing up in a place that was still largely agricultural. and then having the ability to essentially design a spoke ecosystem around or the high-tech industry. and that is just not going to happen again. and to say is, well, we want to build an imthattive silicon valley, i mean, you see this.

you can go to places, and they have literally built universities with red tile roofs. [laughter] and that, you know, that is not going to do it. [laughter] >> you've talked about unintended consequences and some of the costs that come for people like the middle class and others. this question talks about as the barriers to cost of living increase, do you think the barriers to ideas and perhaps missing out on new innovations? >> i do worry about this. i worry about it. i think there are plenty of people who are willing to sacrifice for a few years, you know? they come over here, they aren't in a relationship, they don't have children, and they're willing to just kind of go for it. i do worry about what comes next though. and i do worry that, i mean, i

live in palo alto, and basically none of our teachers, none of our firefighters, none of our police, none of -- none of them can afford to live in the community anymore. and, you know, people are dealing with two hour commutes each way, and we're all dealing with all that traffic. so that really does worry me. and then i put on my historian hat and literally in the early 1970s people are talking about it's too crowded, it's too expensive. [laughter] and so i don't finish it's, it seems really, really, really difficult right now. and we, you know, san francisco, i think, in some sense is really going to be the testing ground on this because there is a lot of activism around affordable housing and such is. and a lot of these issues -- because we've come up with it. of and san francisco is suddenly experiencing it as something new on this scale, and we've seen it in the battles over the google buses, for example, so-called

google buses. and this sort of question of how do we have a livable community when there are fortunes of such enormous size being built. i mean, luckily, some of the people building those fortunes are trying to answer these questions, so that's good. >> i'd like to close our conversation tonight with you putting your historian's hat on to think about another sort of word of advice that you might give to a young troublemaker, because the next generation that will be following, what is one word of advice that you would give, and can you tell us a story? >> yes. well, i mean, this was my word which is humility. and i talked about a little bit why i think that matters. another word that i think i could have used is balance, because someone who is full of humility to the extent that they never promote themselves or their ideas, obviously, that's

not going to work. i would say that in general taking advantage of where you are is key because -- and it's not just in the valley, although it's very strong here. but find people who have done this before and get their advice. it doesn't have to be a perfect analog, you know? you just need someone who's done before. and get their help. that's really important. >> thank you. thisthis is leslie berlin. her book, "troublemakers: silicon valley, coming of age." please join me in giving a very warm thanks to leslie. >> thank you. [applause] ..

>> thank you for joining me i am honored and excited about having this conversation regarding your book which is remarkable and f