It's part of a growing movement to reject feudal and surveillance based business models.
Those business models are largely an artifact of the dot.com bust and the need to find some way to make "free" pay... they're a recent development, probably not a permanent one, and are not synonymous with Silicon Valley.
For most of it modern incarnation -- say 1970 to present -- Silicon Valley was all about personal computing and democratizing technology. Hopefully it can return to its roots.
OT but I was watching a docu- on Goldman Sachs and found interesting parallels between the rise of the "surveillance" model in the tech sector and the financial sector. They both succeed based upon the successful monetization of customer data. That may be the content of your emails searches in Google's case or a client's trading position in Goldman's but the goal is the same.
Those business models are largely an artifact of the dot.com bust and the need to find some way to make "free" pay... they're a recent development, probably not a permanent one, and are not synonymous with Silicon Valley.
For most of it modern incarnation -- say 1970 to present -- Silicon Valley was all about personal computing and democratizing technology. Hopefully it can return to its roots.