Disruptions: Looking Beyond Silicon Valley’s Bubble

[Starry Messenger]

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/disruptions-looking-beyond-silicon-valleys-bubble/

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I moved to the center of the tech industry from New York City last year, and I have never experienced anywhere quite like the Valley.

The money here is obscene. The newly minted rich are obsessed with outperforming their rivals. One industry party I attended had a jungle theme. This included a real, 600-pound tiger in a cage and a monkey that would pose for Instagram photos. A prominent Googler’s Christmas party in Palo Alto had mounds of snow in the yard to round out the festive spirit. It was 70 degrees outside. Sean Parker, a founder of Airtime, threw a lavish, $1 million party that included models he hired to roam the room and a performance by Snoop Dogg.

Eat dinner with start-up founders and venture capitalists, and the conversation can quickly shift from industry banter about the latest billion-dollar acquisition to the type of private jet people own.

This is where a select group in the Valley are oblivious to the rest of the world, ensconced in their own protective bubble. In the rest of America, where the unemployment rate is stuck above 8 percent, people are struggling to cover their mortgages or to find jobs that won’t be replaced by technology or sent overseas. In Silicon Valley, some people are worrying about which multimillion-dollar home they can buy — there are only so many available, after all — or whether their handcrafted jeans subtly signal that the wearer is more attuned to aesthetics, like, say, Steve Jobs was.

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[KamaAina]

1. Tell me about it.

Nonprofits here can't get these obscenely rich people to donate to them, because obviously there are no social needs here in the Valley , so whatever charity they do give goes to the developing world (because it's cooler ).