Martin Varsavsky: Silicon Valley doesn´t exist

Interestingly enough, just few weeks ago while planning our anniversary trip to the US I was DESPERATELY looking for "tourist guides" to Silicon Valley... stupid and techie enough, I was running Google, Live, Yahoo and Ask with queries like "Silicon Valley tours", "what to see in Silicon Valley"... "Driving through Silicon Valley".... Guess what? - got nothing even near to what queries about "Death Valley" were yielding ....

SO: it looks that Martin is right and this pace does not exist!.....

....in spite of anything people say .... and of how bright and smart people of Silicon Valley are! :)

... and here is the Martin Varsavsky's post on the subj:

Silicon Valley doesn´t exist (do not read this if you live in Silicon Valley)

Posted: 21 Oct 2007 03:47 PM CDT

Silicon Valley doesn´t exist. If you live in Europe as I do and you dream of going to Silicon Valley as I used to, let me warn you now, there is no such place as Silicon Valley. Before starting Fon, and having so many friends and partners in Silicon Valley including famous Silicon Valley VCs Sequoia and famous Silicon Valley tech companies eBay and Google, I thought there was actually a place that Silicon Valley as much as there is a place as New York City. But if you go to Google Maps and you input Silicon Valley you will see that no concrete location comes up. So how can so many people refer to a place that not only does not exist but that nobody really knows where it begins and ends, and frequently confuse it with a more generic "Bay Area", which also people disagree as to where it begins and ends but it seems to encompass Silicon Valley plus other undefined places. After spending a week in Silicon Valley visiting companies in Cupertino, Mountain View, friends in Los Altos Hills, and different neighborhoods of San Francisco I think that it is time somebody tells the the rest of the world what Silicon Valley is an imaginary concept and not a geography. Silicon Valley is a dream, it is a trait as in "silicon valley creativity", or a personality "silicon valley attitude", or a career "silicon valley entrepreneur". In short, Silicon Valley is a lot of things and yet none of them are an actual geography.