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The apple orchard studded land that
resides between San Francisco and San Jose is now silicon valley.
The emergence of high tech companies in New York city gave birth to Silicon
Alley. And now... the next big thing. As you read this paper
today, you are standing on Silicon Island. Why?(The polite one asks
politely) I don't really have a reason except for me to say that,
we're emerging. New York Tech has great relationships with all the
technology companies on Long Island and serves as the best avenue to a
job therein which makes almost makes up for lackluster performance in other
areas. What I really want to say is that it's because of people like
me that rise above the crap and shape the future - but then everyone would
hate me.
This is a column about the high tech
industry and thing that shape it, are shaped by it and those things the
will become relevant to it soon enough. So I want to start out by
really making enemies by talking about Apple Computer Inc. Apple
is the company that defined the silicon valley upstart culture and then
went nuts. I say it went nuts because it was built on selling vision
and culture and soon enough some business men screwed it all up.
Steve Jobs, one of the founders was forced out and it all went to ruin.
The stock price was raped and the marketing model was all wrong.
They were still producing some of the greatest technology in the world
and had the most inviting corporate culture but the management behind made
it look basically wrapped in used toilet paper. We are in the midst
of a happy ending right now, Steve Jobs started a computer company turned
software company and his golden-boy of Silicon Valley charm got him the
best engineers on earth who made some of the coolest software around.
I say that about NeXT's software even though I have never directly used
any of it. Apple bought Steve's NeXT and is incorporating it into
a big operating system extravaganza known as Mac OS X(read Mac-o-s-ten).
Most of all, Steve Jobs and his gang brought style and passion back to
Apple and the Mac. The iMac (the i stands for internet) is the most
killer consumer computer ever because it uses the same hardware as Apple's
high end systems unlike other consumer machines. The combination
of Apple's excellent technology and new found ability to make it known
has driven the stock price to all-time highs approaching $80. Quicktime
TV is Apple's digital media distribution plan that is redefining the internet
delivering high speed, high quality, digital content from Disney, Fox,
Warner Bros., and the list goes on. None of this is news it is just
my take on these ideas. I'll leave you with a treat, when NYIT's
computer graphics lab was downsized back in 1980, the department all went
to work or Lucasfilms. They made up a division of Lucasfilms that
was later made an independent company after being purchased by Steve Jobs.
That company was called Pixar who now makes feature films with a little
firm called Disney.
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