as housing prices rise in the San Francisco Bay Area, angry activists are targeting those shuttles to protest the region's gentrification.
"We want the ruling class, which is becoming the tech class, to listen to our voices and listen to the voices of folks that are being displaced," said one SF protester.
Around 7AM on January 21st, 2014, a small group of protesters gathered in the driveway of an understated $1 million four bedroom family home in Berkeley and unfurled a hand-painted banner that read "GOOGLE’S FUTURE STOPS HERE."
"What's happening is if you have a great idea and the technical skills to implement it you can create disproportionate wealth very quickly," he said. "That's good by itself except it increases disparity."
That disparity, Khosla said, will only continue to grow as machine learning and big data technologies improves. Eventually, software will have the ability to replace everything from farmworkers picking lettuce to law clerks.
..to Silicon Valley’s question of “Is Internet access a human right?” one could respond by turning the tables: What kind of “Internet,” and what kind of “access”?
"San Francisco’s minimum wage is nearly $3 more than the federal minimum wage, yet it is three-and-a-half times less than what is needed to afford a decent two-bedroom unit in this expensive jurisdiction"—or $37.62 an hour. Or, $78,250 a year. Either way: Time to blockade a Google bus.
Some of the biggest names in technology have been making the pilgrimage to the desert for years, happily blending in unnoticed. These include Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the Google founders, and Jeff Bezos, chief executive of Amazon. But now a new set of younger rich techies are heading east, including Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook, employees from Twitter, Zynga and Uber, and a slew of khaki-wearing venture capitalists.
Google, Apple and Facebook are highly profitable and look likely to remain so. Still, a New Yorker looking up at the Pan Am, Chrysler and General Motors buildings might recall, wistfully, that the same must once have been said of those fallen titans, too.
Defense Secretary Ashton Carter is making a big play for Silicon Valley startups and tech innovators that so far have shown little to no interest in working with the Pentagon.
To show its seriousness about engaging Silicon Valley, the Defense Department will stand up a permanent office there called “defense innovation unit experimental” — the first time the Pentagon will have a full-time outreach presence in the Valley. It will be staffed by civilian and military officials, including reservists with private-sector experience.
Carter also is proposing a pilot program to invest in startup ventures under the CIA’s existing In-Q-Tel technology incubator. According to a senior defense official, the Pentagon will make “small investments” in promising technologies in areas like electronics, software and automation.
San Francisco's degree of income inequality has also increased, to levels roughly on par with Madagascar. Of the 150 largest regions in the US, the Bay Area ranked 45th for income inequality in 1979. Now we've jumped to No. 14. Across the US, income inequality has risen steadily since 1979, but in about 1999, the Bay Area's rate of increase surpassed the nation's average.