Adam Fisher grew up in Silicon Valley, and aptly enough for a resident of the world’s tech capital, he spent his time reading science fiction, playing video games and putting together computers. Armed with a degree in English, he began his career as a tech journalist, writing for The New York Times , WIRED , Time and Popular Science , among others. It was during this time that he realised that the stories that were being reported about Silicon Valley were vastly different from what he had heard growing up there. This culminated in his first book, the recently-released Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley , where he dives deep into what made his small, somewhat dull, suburban hometown transform into a region known for being as aggressive as it is creative.
The book follows a very interesting format. The stories are not narrated by the author. Instead, Fisher has compiled and arranged anecdotes and quotes about and from those who played vital roles in shaping the Valley, including Nolan Bushnell (founder of Atari), Sergey Brin (Google), Steve Jobs (Apple), Mark Zuckerburg (Facebook), Marissa Meyers (former chief executive of Yahoo!), Larry Ellison (Oracle) and Jack Dorsey (Twitter).
The book reads like a documentary script, which, given the number of characters, can sometimes be cumbersome to keep track of.
It is telling, that of the 200-odd people Fisher has interviewed in this book, there are only 21 women, out of which a mere seven are engineers. The rest are customer representatives, HR professionals, early bloggers and magazine editors. Valley of Genius does not shy away from the darker truths that have shaped Silicon Valley and rips apart its image — as a shiny town in which dreams come true — by interweaving stories of success with tales of betrayal, fierce competition, and drug abuse.
Excerpts from an email interaction with the author:
Was there a reason you chose to tell the history of Silicon Valley as an oral history, as opposed to writing the book in your own voice?
I didn’t want to simply retell the history — I wanted readers to hear it as it was told by those who were there. I wanted to provide direct access to the hearts and minds of the founders, hackers and freaks that made Silicon Valley. They did it, and they lived it, so I think it’s only fitting that we should first endeavour to understand the story as they do, before we draw our own conclusions.
What was the process of collating quotes and interviews like?
Getting access was incredibly difficult. It took four solid years of knocking on doors, but I finally did get time with virtually everyone I wanted to interview. I did the interviews myself, usually in person, and they were exhaustive. Each meeting took many hours, and sometimes even several days, but it was worth it. There were a few interviews that I wanted and couldn’t get. Steve Jobs, for example: he died before I started my research. I also wanted to get Larry Page and Sergey Brin (the founders of Google) but they don’t speak to the press any more. For them, I dug up the first story that was ever done on Google and convinced the journalist who wrote the story to hand over his original, unedited, interview tapes. I learned that with enough time and research and legwork, there is always a way to get fresh material.
There are a number of anecdotes in the book about obscure but incredibly surprising things that transpired in the Valley. Which one surprised you the most?
The part about Steve Jobs taking LSD to die surprised me the most, because before I began, I thought I knew everything there was to know about him. I’ve been a fanboy since the Apple II era, and I’ve read and re-read all the histories and biographies. And yet, when I went back to interview the people who knew Jobs best, I was constantly surprised. It wasn’t just the drugs, it was his spiritual journey, the way he treated people close to him, his business dealings — everything. In fact, I think that we are just now, almost a decade after his death, starting to get a handle on who he really was. He had a remarkable ability to spin and sell his own myth. That’s the famous “reality distortion field” that everyone talks about. Only now are those distortions finally starting to fade.
The number of women mentioned in the book is minuscule compared to the number of men. Is this because the culture of Silicon Valley is not one that is conducive to women?
There is a glaring absence of women in Valley of Genius because there is a glaring absence of women in the history of Silicon Valley. Exploring the reasons for that is a topic big enough to fill another 500-page book. Part of the reason is cultural. However, it is also true that women have been systematically overlooked by prior historians of technology. That ended up working in my favour, because it turns out that they tell the most amazing stories! The book wouldn’t have been half as good as it turned out to be without the voices of women like Marissa Meyers, Megan Smith, Jane Metcalfe, Katie Geminder and the like. I hope that the next 50 years of Silicon Valley’s history will be much more balanced, in terms of gender, and I do see evidence that the culture is starting to change.
Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley (As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom), published by Twelve (Hachette Book Group), is priced at ₹510 (paperback) on amazon.in
