The Code

The claim was empty bluster, however. Mike Moritz, of Sequoia Capital, peeled back the truth with mordant detachment: “One of the dirty little secrets of the Valley is that all the jobs-creation we like to talk about is probably less than the Big Three automakers have laid off in the last decade. One of the best ways to have a nice Silicon Valley c

Meritocracy was crucial: youth was promoted on ability alone, and the Valley was unusually open to immigrants. In 2001, one resident in three was foreign-born.

However, at a time when IBM and the Soviet government declined to develop the personal computer, hobbyists like the members of the California Homebrew Computer Club resolved to do it by themselves. It was a conscious ideological decision, influenced by the 1960s counterculture with its anarchist ideas of power to the people and libertarian distrust