Out Of The Mouths Of Valley's Techno Tycoons

Eric Ellis, San Jose

02/18/1998

The PR lady at Security First National Bank was firm to the point of being rude - Australia wasn't important enough to be granted an interview about the world's first office-less bank, one that operates in cyberspace. Well, she didn't actually say that. What she did say was: "Australia? We can't spare the bandwidth for you."

What's bandwidth got to do with a simple interview? Er, what is bandwidth? She was talking in a language all its own, one that is evolving in Silicon Valley's clubby, cliquey world of techno tycoonery. It's not jargon. It's something much more elite, a Babel where the language of the corporate world meshes with a Californian lifestyle and meshes again with the internet.

Seeking a partner-for-life who's as smart as you are? Then if you are in Silicon Valley, you must looking for a "value-added relationship". Want successful kids and a happy homelife? You're after a "killer app", applying an abbreviated term for a stunning software application - an applet.

In Silicon Valley, early-year birthdays and anniversaries don't happen in January, February or March, they happen in "Q1," the first fiscal quarter.

Modesty is also valued in Silicon Valley. Or is it envy? If a competitor is so arrogant to believe the wave of sudden and positive media written about him and his creation, he's known to be "sucking his own exhaust". And particularly so if the market doesn't rate it.

And if you think your neighbour is acting a little strange, it's highly possible he or she is "pre-IPO", a nervous condition brought on by confidential plans to take a hot start-up company public.

If you think this a joke, think again. Silicon Valley academics are in the middle of near decade-long study into Silicon Valley culture and are taking it very seriously.

The study is being undertaken by the anthropological department of San Jose University and is so serious it's been taken up with studies in respected academic journals, and The Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor.

It's quite common to be invited to a dinner party in a Silicon Valley home and hear the guests speak of themselves as "vesting in peace" while planning their "exit strategy". That doesn't mean they've suddenly found God while struck with a terminal illness.

More likely, they've lucked into an exciting technology - exciting for them - and will become hugely wealthy from stock options - Silicon Valley's lifeblood - when it goes public, as it surely will before it sells out to a bigger outfit like Microsoft or Oracle or Sun. If they speak with experience, it's likely they could be a "serial entrepreneur" like valley legend Steve Jobs, who started Apple, then Next, then Pixar and is now back at Apple again, having made several fortunes along the way.

At the pre-dinner drinks - Silicon Valley types place great emphasis on domestic entertaining - you could be asked "what's your space?" That's not a neo-Nimbin, New Age pleasantry but is a polite inquiry as to one's occupation, suggesting work is not merely 9-5 but a lifestyle issue.

At the party might be a few "bitniks", the people who use coin-operated computers in cafes to log on, as well as some "synthespians", human forms imported into computer programs, as used by Hollywood.

If the night's been a bit too much, you might be derided by your fellow guests as one who occupies "meatspace", a person why gets their information from books, newspapers and TV instead of a computer.

If your host is doing well, chances are he or she passed the "elevator test", a much-valued ability to visualise and articulate the corporate applications of a tech idea in the lift en route to the workspace.

The SJU academics, led by respected Professor Charles Darrah, believe Silicon Valley is in the midst of creating a new dialect and morals code, as influenced by total immersion in the developing techno-culture.

They argue that such phenomenon has developed periodically over time as a result of war, or geography, or isolation - like the Basques of Spain, who live in a mountainous region developed an exclusive language and culture indecipherable to outsiders.

The same is happening in Silicon Valley, except the divisions are not geographic but ones of technology and business.