Party on Sand Hill Road

The day hasn’t started yet.  But I’ll be driving around in a rental car all day.  Those of you who dread another post about traffic conditions will be spared such detail today:  I can’t type and drive. I’ll reckon with the day now, lying in bed at 6:00AM.  It’s that, read a book or go back to bed I’m afraid, as the internet connection I had off my phone died a while back.  I’m staying at a friend’s and I don’t know his WiFi password.  The chord to charge the phone is out in the car.  But if I head out to get it I won’t be able to get back in through the gate on his complex front door.   Just as well.  I imagine I’d be working, but really, I’d like be considering yet another editorial about Trump’s angular choreography.

Party on Sand Hill Road yesterday.  Out on a porch amidst the gnarled California oak trees with the sweeping view of the Stanford campus and the Bay.  Years collapse accordion like, but I seem to recall I was on this same porch at a party hosted by the same firm two or three years back.  And I can remember every conversation seemed to be about Big Data.  “I’ve gotta put you in touch with a young guy whom I’ve invested in.  He’s big data.  Sensors in malls.”  This year it all seemed to be about AI.  Perhaps it was merely what was on my mind.  I’d met an Artificial Intelligence company earlier in the day.   And I’d read a half a dozen articles in preparation or the meeting.

Will half the country be put out of work by algorithms?  Is the race between China and the U.S. to develop a controlling singularity inevitable or overstated?  Is that what you think?  Everyone will be focused on non-repeatable service oriented jobs that labor to maximize happiness and comfort.  “That’s sounds awful.”  “That’s what the Luddites said.”  Fortunately, a woman with the surname Liao on her card walks up and introduces herself, changing the topic.  I ask her where she’s from in Chinese and she tells me Chengdu.  It appears she has developed a cure for cancer.  A simple ‘good on you’ won’t do as a rejoinder for a claim such as this.

Walking back to my rental car in the late afternoon, aching California sun I considered this Valley variant of wealth and entitlement.  It’s related to the strain that lives in Beverley Hills, or Central Park East, or Daikanyama or back in Shunyi.  They each seem for a minute’s consideration, to be real destinations, places of resolution.  This one here on Sand Hill Road, is a particular fusion of wealth, science and futuristic authorship. I walk by the young men from the catering company who are outside smoking in their untucked white ruffle shirts, laughing at something salacious and the spell is broken.  I walk right up to one of the strange old oak trees with their petite green little leaves and I snap a few photographs.

Friday, 05/19/17