← Analysis Walkabout — wander by real connection, not category
Route 128 Had Three Times Silicon Valley's Tech Workforce in 1965. By 1975, Silicon Valley Had Already Pulled Ahead.
Economist Alfred Marshall described it in 1890 without fully explaining it: when an industry concentrates in one place, "the mysteries of the trade become no mysteries... but are as it were in the air." Route 128 had three times Silicon Valley's tech workforce in 1965 -- and lost the lead within a decade anyway.
Read this piece →
Where this connects
In January 1925, Three Men Founded an Airplane Company in Wichita, Kansas. By 1928, One in Four US-Built Planes Came From There.
Three men founded an airplane company in Wichita, Kansas in January 1925 -- a city with no coastline and no obvious advantage for buildin...
How Place Shapes You
There's a real, measurable window -- roughly before age 10, closing by the mid-teens -- after which a fully native accent becomes very ha...
Job-Switching Isn't a Red Flag. It's How You Find Out Whether You Have the "Unbureaucratic Personality."
Max Weber described what happens to some people inside a large rule-bound structure: they self-rationalize into it, becoming, in his word...
By 2005, Real Language-Processing Companies Existed in Las Vegas, Pittsburgh, and a Utah Suburb. Not One Was in Silicon Valley.
By 2005, real language-processing companies existed in Las Vegas, a Boston suburb, Pittsburgh, and a small city outside Salt Lake City --...
Start a new walkabout