THE VIDEO SHELF · history of silicon valley
The Secret History of Silicon Valley
Steve Blank tells how World War II, Stanford's Frederick Terman and military and intelligence agencies shaped the rise of Silicon Valley. The talk centers on the Cold War electronic warfare and signals intelligence work that seeded the region's tech industry.
Why HN readers recommended it
HN recommends it as an eye-opening, once-secret history of where Silicon Valley came from, and cites it whenever the military roots of tech come up.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- Google TechTalks
- Topic
- history of silicon valley
- Format
- talk
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 5
- HN mentions in dataset
- 11
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2008–2016
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Harry Truman once observed "the only surprises are the history you don't know." This is an eye opening perspective on some history "hidden in plain sight" of the origins of Silicon Valley. Video of a version of this talk given at Google is available here …
skmurphy on Hacker News · 2008-11
In Steve Blank Nov-20 Lunch @ SV Computer History Museum "Secret History of Silicon Valley"I just watched his entire presentation, which was better than his blog posts: [VIDEO] absolutely brilliant and a must see. Steve's blog is great, but he also has a good presentation style thick with interesting content.
nikcub on Hacker News · 2011-04
In Starting Up Silicon Valley StyleSteve Blank on the Secret History of Silicon Valley: [VIDEO] History of electronic warfare -- very surprising, recently declassified stuff. Plus the history of Silicon Valley itself, from a pro-valley perspective.
LocalMan on Hacker News · 2011-06
In Ask HN: What documentaries are worth watching?
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.
