A good feed of fish and microchips
Trailblazing people can be animals when it comes to names.
One of the grossest name-choices I’ve ever encountered is The Royal Garrison of Saint Francis. Francis was the peace-loving man from Asissi who embraced a life of poverty and prayer, and did a special line in talking to animals. A man of peace who revered the natural world. To name a colonial armed fortress after him, as the Spanish army did in 1776, was pig-ignorant. Common sense has since prevailed and we now know the place simply as San Francisco.
In the last few days, Wellington has been given good reason to have a closer look at San Francisco. The council’s planning documents suggest we associate ourselves with Silicon Valley and try to develop our high-tech industries. The idea is that as the looming plague of job cuts decimates the civil service, then we all retrain as cyber-workers and make truckloads of dough.
Such thinking is astute and may in fact be the key to huge success. The thing to note, however, is that success is never instant. Silicon Valley, a part of San Francisco, evolved, byte by byte, into the mega-power it is today. A hundred years ago, it started to build up its electronic industry. Along the way, San Francisco fine-tuned its goals and increasingly supported and engaged with the innovative work of its universities. Another factor in the development of ‘Silicon Valley’ 40 years ago was the availability of heaps of cheap space for workshops and factories. It was a user-friendly, self-defining, city. They also had land to expand outwards into. And its political leaders were committed to developing high-tech industry.
If we want to copy aspects of Silicon Valley, I’d look first for large spaces for high-tech factories to be built. There’s very little in the inner city, but if we could think more “regionally” (“super”-y), I’d chew into farmland in the Manawatu and Wairarapa. Next, get rid of the crippling student loan debts that our graduates carry on their backs (like humps) as they take their first wobbly steps into the world of enterprise. Instead of hunting them down like stinking fugitives we should, in the first place, make it financially pain-free to study and research in Wellington. Stronger work bridges need to be built between universities and our proposed silicon empire.
Is it feasible as an idea? Could Wellington ever take off in this ‘modern’-type stuff? You betcha. The Mayor has issued the challenge. What’s now needed is belief, buy-in from the universities, and support for new-wave entrepreneurs.
In the late 60s, there was a song Scott McKenzie used to sing, that went: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...” In those days, America was negative about this kinky town. The odd thing is that the “gentle people” (of the song) have subsequently restructured the whole world and its communications. They’re rich. Get the flowers out.
One of the grossest name-choices I’ve ever encountered is The Royal Garrison of Saint Francis. Francis was the peace-loving man from Asissi who embraced a life of poverty and prayer, and did a special line in talking to animals. A man of peace who revered the natural world. To name a colonial armed fortress after him, as the Spanish army did in 1776, was pig-ignorant. Common sense has since prevailed and we now know the place simply as San Francisco.
In the last few days, Wellington has been given good reason to have a closer look at San Francisco. The council’s planning documents suggest we associate ourselves with Silicon Valley and try to develop our high-tech industries. The idea is that as the looming plague of job cuts decimates the civil service, then we all retrain as cyber-workers and make truckloads of dough.
Such thinking is astute and may in fact be the key to huge success. The thing to note, however, is that success is never instant. Silicon Valley, a part of San Francisco, evolved, byte by byte, into the mega-power it is today. A hundred years ago, it started to build up its electronic industry. Along the way, San Francisco fine-tuned its goals and increasingly supported and engaged with the innovative work of its universities. Another factor in the development of ‘Silicon Valley’ 40 years ago was the availability of heaps of cheap space for workshops and factories. It was a user-friendly, self-defining, city. They also had land to expand outwards into. And its political leaders were committed to developing high-tech industry.
If we want to copy aspects of Silicon Valley, I’d look first for large spaces for high-tech factories to be built. There’s very little in the inner city, but if we could think more “regionally” (“super”-y), I’d chew into farmland in the Manawatu and Wairarapa. Next, get rid of the crippling student loan debts that our graduates carry on their backs (like humps) as they take their first wobbly steps into the world of enterprise. Instead of hunting them down like stinking fugitives we should, in the first place, make it financially pain-free to study and research in Wellington. Stronger work bridges need to be built between universities and our proposed silicon empire.
Is it feasible as an idea? Could Wellington ever take off in this ‘modern’-type stuff? You betcha. The Mayor has issued the challenge. What’s now needed is belief, buy-in from the universities, and support for new-wave entrepreneurs.
In the late 60s, there was a song Scott McKenzie used to sing, that went: “If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair...” In those days, America was negative about this kinky town. The odd thing is that the “gentle people” (of the song) have subsequently restructured the whole world and its communications. They’re rich. Get the flowers out.
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