DEAR SILICON VALLEY: Here's your wake-up call

Silicon Valley, to its credit, has always been a hotbed of optimism. In the Valley, the future is always bright. Opportunity is always everywhere. Failures are always just part of the innovation process. So if you ever want to get cheered up about where the world is heading and excited about the future, you just head for the Valley.

In normal times, though, Silicon Valley's optimism is thoughtful and calculated. It is also fact-based. Ideas are hotly debated, and risks are respected and understood.

But in peak boom times, such as the late 1990s, this healthy skepticism and dialogue disappear. Ideas, no matter how fanciful, are assumed to be sound, and success is assumed to be guaranteed. When assumptions are challenged, moreover, the response is dismissive — skeptics "don't get it." And the logic and facts invoked to bat away skepticism often collapse under scrutiny.

This, it seems, is the prevailing attitude in the Valley right now.



http://www.businessinsider.com/silicon-valley-boom-bust-2015-2#ixzz3SWNxYu9O