Word: silicones
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What, other than Silicon Valley garages, has made millionaires out of 1,144 Americans over the past two decades? The answer is state lotteries, which for three straight months have set record payouts for North America. In July a retired Bronx carpenter won $20 million in the New York State lottery, and in August eight players shared a purse of $24.6 million in the Ohio Lotto. Last week a Chicago printer, Michael Wittkowski, 28, claimed sole possession of a $40 million prize that had built up in the Illinois state lottery...
...outsiders, California's Silicon Valley looks like a contemporary El Dorado. Once given over to fruit orchards, its 150 sq. mi. in Santa Clara County are home to some of America's most successful and innovative companies, including Hewlett-Packard, Intel and Apple Computer. Hundreds of other high-technology firms are trying to mimic their success. While the vast majority have prospered, quite a few are now discovering that not all the streets in the valley are paved with profits. For them, the earlier dreams of success and overnight riches have crumbled...
...profits vanish and companies struggle, the venture-capital firms that helped fuel Silicon Valley's early growth have become stingier. Investment bankers who steer young companies toward the stock market are also cutting back. San Francisco's Hambrecht & Quist recently announced layoffs for 5% of its work force. After arranging initial public offerings for 66 companies, worth $2.2 billion in 1983, Hambrecht & Quist has managed only eight sales worth $96 million so far this year...
...saying that the high-tech boom is over, though, or that Silicon Valley is about to short-circuit on its own success. Well-managed companies with strong market niches are thriving, and investors continue to back new ventures in high-growth businesses. Among them: CAD/CAM machines that are used for computer-aided design and manufacturing, and computer-aided engineering equipment. Still, the El Dorado atmosphere has waned. Says Public Relations Executive Richard Moran, a former Atari employee: "A gym teacher in Indianapolis still views Silicon Valley as the promised land. But a lot of people here...
...find out, Turkle became the Margaret Mead of silicon. During six years of study, she interviewed more than 400 computer users (about half of them children), lived in the subculture of virtuoso programmers, called hackers, asked electronic questions on home-user telephone networks and explored the wizardry of M.I.T.'s Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. In a series of vivid vignettes, she reports the various ways the computer "brings philosophy into everyday life...