" The Best Kept Secret in
Silicon Valley "
(China’s Academy of Art, Hangzhou,
September 2015)
piero scaruffi
scaruffi@stanford.edu

Piero Scaruffi
• piero scaruffi
p@scaruffi.com
scaruffi@stanford.edu
• Cultural historian
• Technology analyst
• 30+ years in Silicon Valley
• Pioneered A.I. and Internet
applications

3
Silicon Valley in 1950

4
Why did it happen here?
• The technology, the money and the brains were on
the East Coast and in Europe (the great electronic
research labs, the great mathematicians, Wall
Street, etc)
• The great universities were on the East Coast
(MIT, Harvard, Moore School, Princeton,
Columbia), and in Europe (Cambridge)
• Bell Labs, RCA Labs, IBM Labs
• East Coast, Britain and Germany won most of the
Nobel prizes
• Transistor, computer, etc all invented elsewhere

Silicon Valley 2015
• World's #1 company in…
– Internet services: Google
– Social Media: Facebook
– Semiconductors: Intel
– Business software: Oracle
• Most valued company in the world: Apple
• 18,000 startups
• Location with the most venture capital: 3000 Sand
Hill Rd, Menlo Park
5

6
GDP ($million):
1 USA 16,800,000
2 China 9,240,270
3 Japan 4,901,530
4 Germany 3,634,823
5 France 2,734,949
6 Britain 2,522,261
7 Brazil 2,245,673
8 Russia 2,096,777
9 Italy 2,071,307
10 India 1,876,797
11 Canada 1,825,096
12 Australia 1,560,597
13 Spain 1,358,263
14 South Korea 1,304,554
15 Mexico 1,260,915
16 Indonesia 868,346
17 Turkey 820,207
18 Netherlands 800,173
19 Saudi Arabia 745,273
20 Switzerland 650,782
21 Argentina 611,755
San Francisco Bay Area ~600,000
(8 million people)
GDP per capita ($):
1 Qatar 98,814
2 Luxembourg 78,670
San Francisco Bay Area 74,815
3 Singapore 64,584
4 Norway 54,947
5 Brunei 53,431
6 United States 53,101
(World Bank, 2013)
Nobel Prizes (2014)
1. USA 349
2. Britain 116
3. Germany 101
4. France 66
San Francisco Bay Area 43
• Sweden 30
• Russia 27
• Switzerland 26
• Canada 23
• Austria 22
• Italy 20
• Japan 19

Today
7
1950

8
Why did it happen here?
• The official history of Silicon Valley
– Defense/DARPA
– Fred Terman at Stanford and Stanford Industrial Park
– William Shockley’s lab
– Fairchild/Intel/semiconductors
– Xerox PARC, SRI Intl/computer-human interface
– Apple, personal computing, videogames
– Unix, Internet, Relational databases
– The dotcoms
– Google, Facebook, …

9
Why is it called “Silicon” valley?
• Intel 4004 (1971)

10
What was special about the
San Francisco Bay Area
before 1971?

11
Before 1971…
1902: California Society of Artists
1903: Halcyon, a utopian community
1906: American Arts and Crafts Movement
moves to San Francisco (Arthur Mathews)
1907: California College of the Arts and
Crafts (Frederick Meyer)
The "Montgomery Block" (Frank Pixley's
literary magazine the "Argonaut)
1913: Carmel’s artist community (Armin
Hansen, Percy Gray, William Merritt
1913: Society of Etchers (Ralph Stackpole)

12
Before 1971…
1915: The Panama-Pacific International
Exposition (Bernard Maybeck’s Palace of
Fine Arts)
1921: Ansel Adams’ photographs of Yosemite
1912: Charles Seeger at UC Berkeley, Henry
Cowell’s "The Tides of Manaunaun"
1921: East-West Art Society (Chiura Obata)
1930: Henry Cowell (John Cage’s teacher)
commissions Leon Theremin to create the
first electronic rhythm machine (the
"Rhythmicon")
1930: Hans Hofmann @ U.C. Berkeley

13
Before 1971…

14
Before 1971…
1930s: Achilles Rizzoli
Dominant fine art: photography: Dorothea
Lange, Imogen Cunningham, James Weston,
1932: Group f/ exhibition
1930s: Wall painting (Edith Hamlin’s Mission
High School mural)
1935: San Francisco Museum of Art (Grace
Morley)
1939: Golden Gate International Exposition @
Treasure Island (Ralph Stackpole's 24-meter
tall "Pacifica")
1939: Villa Montalvo’s artist residency program

15
Before 1971…
Cunningham: “Three Dancers” (1929)
Lange:
“Migrant Mother” (1936)

16
Before 1971…
1943: David Park @ California School of Fine
Arts
1945: Photography Department @ California
School of Fine Arts/ San Francisco Art
Institute (Ansel Adams, Minor White,
Dorothea Lange, Imogen Cunningham)
1946: Frank Stauffacher’s "Art in Cinema"
series @ Museum of Art + Sidney Peterson’s
avantgarde cinema @ California School of
the Arts
1947: Mark Rothko @ California College of
Arts and Crafts

17
Before 1971…
1947: Festival of Modern Poetry
1951: “Dynaton” painters @ Mill Valley
(surrealist painter Wolfgang Paalen)
1952: Wally Hedrick’s collages of junk metal
1952: King Ubu/Six Gallery artist-run
cooperative (Jay DeFeo)
1953: Zen apostle Alan Watts’ radio program
at Berkeley's KPFA station

18
Before 1971…
1950s: "Bay Area Figurative Painting” (David
Park, Elmer Bischoff, Richard Diebenkorn)
1950s: Lou Harrison incorporates Chinese
opera, Native-American folk, jazz and
Indonesian gamelan into Western classical
music
1950s: "San Francisco Renaissance" (poets
Kenneth Rexroth, Madeline Gleason, Robert
Duncan, William Everson, Muriel Rukeyser)
1950s: "Beat generation" (writers Jack Kerouac
and Robert Creeley from New York,
Michael McClure and Jack Spicer in
Berkeley, Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen
from Oregon)

19
Before 1971…
1953: Peter Martin’s and Lawrence
Ferlinghetti’s bookstore "City Lights”
1954: Poetry Center @ San Francisco State
University (Madeline Gleason)
1955: Allen Ginsberg's recitation of "Howl" @
Six Gallery
1957: Contemporary Bay Area Figurative
Painting exhibition
1957: San Francisco International Film Festival
1959: Rat Bastard Protective Association (junk
sculptor Bruce Conner)
1959: Ron Davis’ Mime Troupe

20
Before 1971…
1959: Funk movement (sculptors Peter
Voulkos, Robert Arneson)
1960: Wayne Thiebaud @ UC Davis (pop art)
1961: Bruce Baillie and Mildred Strands’ San
Francisco Cinematheque + Bruce Baillie’s
artist-run cooperative Canyon Cinema
1962: San Francisco Tape Music Center
(Morton Subotnick, Pauline Oliveros, Terry
Riley)
1962: Michael Murphy’s Esalen Institute at Big
Sur for "spiritual healing"
1963: Don Buchla’s electronic synthesizer
1963: First public showing of computer art @
San Jose State University (Joan Shogren)

21
Before 1971…
1964: Mario Savio’s "Free Speech
Movement" at U.C. Berkeley
1965: Max Scherr’s political magazine
"Berkeley Barb"
1965: Ken Kesey’s "Merry Pranksters"
1965: Owsley "Bear" Stanley manufactures
LSD at home
1965: Ron Davis’ essay "Guerrilla Theatre"
1965: Family Dog Production (the first hippie
festival)
1966: Bruce Nauman @ San Francisco Art
Institute (pop art)

22
Before 1971…
1966: Magazine “San Francisco Oracle”
1966: "Diggers", a group of improvising
actors and activists
1966: The first "Summer of Love" of the
hippies
1966: Black Panther Party
1967: The first "Human Be-In" @ Golden
Gate Park
1967: Rock festival @ Monterey
1967: John Lion’s Magic Theatre
1968: Stewart Brand’s "Whole Earth Catalog"
1968: Chip Lord’s Ant Farm ( avantgarde
architecture and design)

23
Before 1971…
1967: Ali Akbar Khan’s College of Music
1968: Robert Crumb’s comic book "Zap Comix" (1968) +
first comics-only store in the USA (Gary Arlington)
1969: United Nations’ conference titled "Man and his
Environment" in San Francisco
1969: Exploratorium at the Palace of Fine Arts + "Cybernetic
Serendipity", an exhibition of computer art 1970: Roger
Brand's comic magazine "Real Pulp Comics" 1970: San
Francisco celebrates the first "Earth Day"

24
Before 1971…
1970: Artist in residency program at Xerox
PARC
1970: "Gay Pride Parade"
1971: "Feminist Art Program" at the
California Institute of the Arts
1971: George Lucas’ Lucasfilms

25
Why Silicon Valley?
• Until the 1960s the Bay Area was mainly
famous for
– Eccentric artists/writers
– Anti-war protests
– Anti-capitalist protests
– Hippies
– Rock music
– Environmentalism
– Women’s and Gay’s Liberation
Movements
– Eastern spirituality

26
Why Silicon Valley?
The first major wave of
immigration of young educated
people from all over the world
took place during the hippy era
(“Summer of Love”)
The first major wave of technology
was driven by independents,
amateurs and hobbyists (From
ham radio to the Homebrew
Computer Club)

27
Why Silicon Valley?
• Anti-corporate sentiment
• The start-ups implement principles
of the hippy commune
• SRI Intl and Xerox PARC:
computation for the masses,
augmented intelligence
Xerox PARC
The first mouse

28
Why Silicon Valley?
• The Bay Area recasts both Unix and the
Internet as idealistic grass-roots
movements
• Young educated people wanted to
change the world
• They did

29
Why Silicon Valley?
• Dysfunctional synergy between two opposite
poles
– The rational and the irrational
– Technologists and anti-technologists
– Hippies and engineers
– Amateurs and corporations
– Nerds and outlaws (the "traitors", Jobs,
Ellison, Zuckerberg, hackers, Google that
copies all the information in the world without
permission)

30
Why Silicon Valley?
• Innovation is a vague word: everything is an
"innovation". What kind of innovation does
Silicon Valley specialize in?

31
Why Silicon Valley?
• What Silicon Valley does best
– Not invented here: computer, transistor,
integrated circuit, robots, Artificial
Intelligence, programming languages,
databases, videogames, Internet, personal
computers, World-wide web, search
engines, social media, smartphones,
wearable computing, space exploration,
electrical cars, driverless cars…

32
Why Silicon Valley?
• What Silicon Valley does best
– Invented here: disrupting products

33
Why Silicon Valley?
• Culture of failure: it comes from the artists
(risk inherent in being an artist)
• Culture of success: it comes from the artists
(congrats if you make a lot of money out of
the crazy ideas you had)
• Meritocracy: it comes from the artists
(industrial power is usually inherited)
• Casual work environment - just like an
artist’s studio
• Silicon Valley is about the garage (like the
artists)

34
Why Silicon Valley?
• Crowdfunding, peer-to-peer file
sharing, the gift economy and the
sharing economy are NOT natural
consequences of traditional industrial
capitalistic society
• but they are a natural consequence of
the artists' way of life

35
Why Silicon Valley?
• Lots of art is not enough, otherwise Europe
(and the East Coast) would easily outclass
Silicon Valley
• It is “who” created the spirit of the society
that matters: was the spirit created by the
artists, by the industry, by the aristocracy,
…?

36
Art/Tech/Science Organizations
• Leonardo ISAST leonardo.info (Frank Malina, 1967)
• YLEM (Trudy Reagan & Howard Pearlmutter, 1981)
• UC Berkeley's Art, Technology, and Culture Colloquium
(Ken Goldberg, 1997)
• Zero1 zero1.org (Andy Cunningham, 2000)
• LASERs lasertalks.com (Piero Scaruffi, 2008)
• BAASICS baasics.com (Selene Foster and Christopher
Reiger, 2011)
• Life Art Science Technology (LAST) festival
lastfestival.com (Piero Scaruffi, 2014)
• Djerassi's Scientific Delirium Madness (Margot Knight,
2014)

37www.lasertalks.com

38
USF
Berkeley
Stanford
UCLA
New York
Washington
UC Santa
Cruz
UC Davis
Austin
Toronto
Kansas
Seattle
London
Berlin
Zurich

39
The 3rd LAST Festival
Life Art Science Technology festival
October 2015
Stanford Univ
www.lastfestival.cn

LAST Festival
• A weekend-long interdisciplinary event consisting of:
– 1. A dozen digital interactive art installations (the "Art
Expo”)
– 2. A symposium (“Engineering the Future”) on the state
of the sciences that are shaping the 21st century.
– 3. A mini-symposium (“Homo Digitalis”) on the impact
that digital media are having on the human mind.
– 4. Demos of new technology (“The Playground”)
40

LAST Festival
• Schedule:
– Friday, 6pm – 10pm: Art Expo
– Saturday
• 1pm - 5pm: Symposium - Engineering the
Future
• 1pm - 10pm: Art Expo
– Sunday, 1pm-4pm: Homo Digitalis
• www.lastfestival.cn
41

42
Replicating Silicon Valley
The rest of the world consistently failed to create
their own Silicon Valleys:
• Sophia Antipolis (France)
• Oulu (Finland)
• Skolkovo (Russia)
• Hsinchu (Taiwan)
• Cyberjaya (Malaysia)
• Bangalore (India)

43
Progress does not need SV
• Case study #2: “Western World 1880-1910”

44
Progress does not need SV
• One century ago, within a relatively short period
of time, the world adopted:
– the car,
– the airplane,
– the telephone,
– the radio
– the record
– cinema
• while at the same time the visual arts went through
– Impressionism,
– Cubism
– Expressionism

45
Progress does not need SV
• while at the same time science came up with
– Quantum Mechanics
– Relativity
• while at the same time the office was
revolutionized by
– cash registers,
– adding machines,
– typewriters
• while at the same time the home was
revolutionized by
– dishwasher,
– refrigerator,
– air conditioning

46
Progress does not need SV
• while at the same time cities adopted high-rise
buildings

47
Progress does not need SV
• There were only 5 radio stations in 1921 but
already 525 in 1923
• The USA produced 11,200 cars in 1903, but
already 1.5 million in 1916
• By 1917 a whopping 40% of households had a
telephone in the USA up from 5% in 1900.
• The Wright brothers flew the first plane in 1903:
during World War I (1915-18) more than 200,000
planes were built

48
… but it may need the arts…
• Accelerating progress happened
simultaneously in the sciences and the arts
Monet Stravinsky Einstein Gaudi Edison

49
Creativity
• Why did it happen here? In Athens? In Florence?
…?

50
Creativity
• Creativity's peaks often correspond with periods
of great instability: classical Athens (at war 60%
of the time), 12th-13th century Venice (built on a
mosquito-infected lagoon by homeless refugees),
the Renaissance (Italy split in dozens of small
states and engulfed in endemic warfare), the 20th
century (two World Wars and a Cold War).

51
What is unique about humans?
• Animals live the same life of their parents
• Humans are the only species whose life
style changes from generation to generation

52
What is unique about humans?
• Children disobey, teenagers are rebels

53
What is unique about humans?
• Animals only “innovate” when there is a
genetic mutation
• Humans innovate all the time
Beaver civilization over the millennia
Human civilization over the millennia

54
What is unique about humans?
• Art is pervasive in nature (eg birds make nests and
sing, bees dance, spiderwebs, humpback whale
songs, etc)
• Each animal has the same aesthetic, generation
after generation
• Human aesthetic changes from generation to
generation

55
What is unique about humans?
…….
Human aesthetic over the centuries
Spider aesthetic over the centuries

56
What is unique about humans?
• Being creative is the natural state of the human
mind
• Creativity is what truly sets humans apart from
other living beings
• It is unnatural for the human race to be creative
only in one field

57
Welcome to the 21st Century
• From Descartes to Relativity and Quantum
Mechanics: how can Religion and Science
coexist
• CP Snow (1959): how can the Humanities
and Science coexist

Big Data
Images by Margot Gerritsen, Tim Davis & Yifan Hu
http://www.cise.ufl.edu/research/sparse/matrices/

Hessian matrix from a quadratic programming problem

Frequency-domain circuit simulation

Linear programming problem

Computational fluid dynamics: shallow-water equations

Linear programming problem

Social network: people and the web pages they like

66
Robots
2000: Cynthia Breazeal's emotional robot, "Kismet"
2003: Hiroshi Ishiguro's Actroid, a young woman
Which is the robot?

67
Robots
2004: Mark Tilden's biomorphic robot Robosapien
2005: Honda's humanoid robot "Asimo"
Asimo over the years

Robots
Special purpose robots:
2001: NEC PaPeRo (a social robot targeting children)
2005: Toyota's Partner (designed for assistance and elderly
care applications)
2007: RobotCub Consortium aggreement, the iCub (for
research in embodied cognition)
2008: Aldebaran Robotics' Nao (for research and education)
2010: NASA's Robonaut-2 (for exploration)

69
Robots
2005: Boston Dynamics' quadruped robot "BigDog“
2008: Nexi (MIT Media Lab), a mobile-dexterous-social robot
2010: Lola Canamero's Nao, a robot that can show its
emotions
2011: Osamu Hasegawa's SOINN-based robot that learns
functions it was not programmed to do
2012: Rodney Brooks' hand programmable robot "Baxter"

70
Robots
• Stats

71
Trivia
• Japanese robots tend to be female because
they look less threatening

72
Robots in Cinema
• “Metropolis” (1927)

73
Robots in Cinema
• “Ex Machina” (2015)

74
Robots in Theater
• Oriza Hirata’s robot theater
“I, Worker” (2008)
“Sayonara” (2010)

The future?
75

The future? 
76

The future?
• Moore’s law
77

The future? 
• “Taking a step forward is easy… just make
sure what you are stepping into” (Piero’s law)
78

The future?
• Artists know better!
79

The future!
80Songzhuang (Beijing) China Academy of Art (Hangzhou)

The future!
81