Author traces history of Silicon Valley and real estate
Michael Malone, journalist, podcast host and author of The Big Score: The Billion Dollar Story of Silicon Valley, was a special guest speaker at a district Silicon Valley Realtors meeting last month. Malone traced the history of Silicon Valley and real estate from the time the region was a land filled with fruit trees to becoming one of the most coveted places to live.
From the beginning, people were attracted to Silicon Valley because of its beautiful weather and top-notch higher education institutions founded in the mid- to late 1800s, like University of California, Stanford University, Santa Clara University, and the region’s cheap land.
Malone said World War II was a major source of innovation. Soldiers and sailors docked at San Francisco and were enamored with it. After the war, they returned to the Golden Gate, and many settled there and in the valley because of the inexpensive real estate. They worked at Fairchild, a semiconductor company based in San Jose, which became a pioneer in manufacturing transistors and integrated circuits, and Hewlettpackard, another rising company. These and other emerging companies, like Intel, also attracted young, brilliant 25-year-olds from the Midwest.
Silicon Valley became known as the “valley of heart’s delight,” signaling the rise of early wealth and the formation of old downtowns of Sunnyvale, Mountain View, San Jose. Homes were designed as flat-top houses of wood or stucco. Eichler homes featuring
open floor plans, floorto-ceiling glass windows and courtyards became popular in the 1950s.
Malone said Silicon Valley has gone through many industrial phases, from the 1900s with vacuum tubes which became key components to the development of radio, television, radar, sound recording, long-distance telephone networks, analog and computers, to semiconductors and microchips, and the rise of the internet and World Wide Web. This brought on companies like Apple and the social network age with Facebook and Twitter.
“We basically exist in cyberspace in the social network world,” said Malone. “So much money is being generated here, where hundreds of thousands of apps for the iphone are being created.”
Cyber Currency, artificial intelligence, and big data are being created behind the scenes. “It’s the internet age where content is everything, the age of smart robots where they and computers will be designed to do virtually everything for us,” said Malone. “The question is how intelligent will they become? It’s both exciting and terrifying. Pretty soon people are going to be buying homes with bitcoins.”
The pandemic accelerated the Great Resignation and freelancing and movement of people out of state. The home now is an office headquarters with rooms as grand workstations. Cars are no longer as important to get to work.
Malone wonders as we live in this world of cyberspace, how appealing will weather here still be, especially if compounded by traffic and high-priced homes. He said the state has little initiative investing in transportation to connect people. He sees cities going vertical, focusing more on revenue and less on quality of life. Housing demand will fuel investment in multifamily development, infilling, with fewer stand-alone homes. This could make cities like Sunnyvale look like major cities beset by crime and pollution. He pointed out that San Francisco is no longer a desirable place to live.
Malone said companies are moving their base to other states which offer businesses better financial incentives and more affordable homes. Malone said giant companies like Amazon, Apple and Google will likely remain in the region. The downside will lie in the creation of a new generation of entrepreneurs, and if these young talents do not choose to remain here, big companies will fade and die. And if new creations do not emerge and new entrepreneurship fails to fill excitement, it could kill Silicon Valley, said Malone.