导读：

感谢大家订阅皮埃罗·斯加鲁菲（Piero Scaruffi）的钛媒体72问.原声知识专栏《硅谷的秘密》。我是今天的提问者赵何娟。今天皮埃罗要继续跟我们讲的是硅谷早期几个关键技术的诞生，以及为什么其实硅谷至今的文化都不是崇尚发明？皮埃罗在评价苹果公司时，会说乔布斯的另一位联合创始人沃兹是真正的发明家，苹果第一代产品其实沃兹发明的，但是为何他在苹果的地位却远远不如乔布斯？

There were three inventors of the transistor, not one, two started on East Coast. In fact  one of the inventors a transistor is one of the few people who won 2 Nobel Prizes. But why he didn't start Silicon Valley? Because society was different. William Shockley happened to open a lab in Palo Alto and in that society, it was okay to risk and it was ok to start a company. Most of the people work for him were not from the bay area, they were young immigrant. So there was something that was attracting them about the bay area. So everything that they tell you about the history of silicon valley is true. But you have to realize that East Coast had hundred times more potentially the hundred times more engineers a hundred times more money and there the big corporations with power you know. So the official history of Silicon Valley was true but it doesn't explain how we become number one. We should have been number twenty or number twenty five not number one.

事实上，半导体的其中一个发明者获得了两次诺贝尔奖，为什么他没有创造出硅谷？因为两地的社会环境不同。肖克利碰巧在帕罗奥图开了公司，而当地有鼓励冒险与创业；为其工作的人都不是本地人，都是年轻的移民，对这些年轻人来说，旧金山湾区很有吸引力；所以有关硅谷的历史，这些部分是正确的。

最开始硅谷有斯坦福，有肖克利，有仙童，英特尔这些创业公司，但你需要知道的是东海岸其实更有潜力，更多工程师，更多钱，更多大公司。现在你看到的硅谷历史的官方说法是属实的，但官方说法并没有解释硅谷为什么会成为世界第一。它应该是第二十，或者第二十五才对，而非第一。

 In the seventies there were two very important research laboratories they never made money, but very important, Xerox PARC， SRI International. By the way one thing I didn't tell you is that Stanford is still a very small university. People exaggerate the importance of Stanford. It one Nobel prize until the fifties whatever and it was very difficult for Stanford to attract the good professors. Who wants to live in California? The big universities, Princeton Yale MIT Harvard, or at East Coast, all of them. SRI International was created by Stanford to do projects with with a military basically, and Xerox PARC was created by Xerox there was famous for cameras was a camera company. It was a research laboratory, do basic research, and Xerox never really believed in that laboratory. T he big laboratory of Xerox was on the East Coast. If you have a laboratory in the bay area, you get crazy people to work for you. You can look at the pictures of the engineers at Xerox PARC, blue jeans, t-shirt, long hair sitting on the floor, you know, the same picture at IBM or at the Chinese company, in those years, suit and tie, everybody very serious, very professional, right? So you really see that is different and Xerox PARC is the place where they started thinking of putting a computer on a desk. Today what's the big deal. When I  grew up the computers of those days, they were monsters, very big very expensive. In fact, you could not touch them. Usually they were inside the room with big walls, there was a little window and there was a man in white like a priest in a Buddhist temple. You deliver your software on punched cards to this man，and this man is the only one who can touch the computer. Imagine this situation and now Xerox PARC, a group of young people decide, I want to put that thing on the desk, that was such a stupid idea. The only customers of computers were the government and the big corporations. Why you want to put a computer on a desk, for what? Their original application was schools, they wanted to give children a computer. Now if you try to think like a nineteen seventy five, this doesn't make any sense, nobody's thinking of that. In the bay area some young people decided this technology could be useful, maybe we should give it to children, totally crazy idea.

70年代的硅谷有很多实验室，但是这些实验室都没有盈利，比如说Xerox PARC、斯坦福国际研究中心（SRI International）等等。另外我需要补充一句，当时斯坦福还是一所小学校。人们都夸大了斯坦福对硅谷的影响，实际上，斯坦福到了50年代才出了第一个诺贝尔奖获得者。那时斯坦福还很难找到好的教授，那时候谁想去加州住？当时好的大学全都在东海岸。斯坦福国际研究中心最初是斯坦福为美国军方做研究的地方，他们基本上做的都是军用技术。

Xerox PARC是由施乐（Xerox）创办的，施乐本身是一家信息技术公司。施乐创办研究所Xerox PARC，但却不相信自己的研究所，因为他们当时在其他地方还有更大的研究所。如果你在旧金山湾区有一个研究所，那你就可以找到疯狂的人为你工作。你可以看一下照片里的工程师，蓝色牛仔裤、T恤、长发，坐在地板上，再看同期的公司，比如说IBM或者是中国公司，人人穿着整齐，打好领带，严肃专业，对吧？你也发现了不同。

Xerox PARC当时已经开始想要把电脑放到桌面上。今天你可能会想这有什么不同？但是在当时那个年代，就像我上学时候看到的电脑，就像怪物一样，很大很贵，在有小窗户的大房间里，电脑操作人员穿着白衣服，就像教堂里的牧师一样。当时的软件还存在打孔卡（punch card）里面，只有一个人能够碰触电脑。Xerox PARC的一群年轻工程师当时想要把这么大的电脑放上桌面，多么愚蠢的想法啊！当时只有政府和大公司需要电脑，你为什么要把电脑放到桌面上？有什么用？他们最初的想法也很酷炫，他们想要给孩子们电脑。如果你尝试以1975年的目光来审视这件事，你会发现这完全说不通。当时的人觉得不可能做到的事情，这群年轻人会认为“嗯，这项技术会很有用，我们应该给孩子们电脑”，非常疯狂的想法。

And SRI International was chosen as one of the nodes of the first internet. It was called ARPANET, that's the beginning the internet. When they chose the SRI as a node of the internet. Again, they ended up with some engineers who are not the normal engineer working for the military. One of them decided to do a famous demo at the end of nineteen sixty eight, where he was in one city, and then the other people were in other city and they were communicating with the computer, using the the Arpanet. Today you say oh what's the big deal, we do it with a smartphone. That's why you do it with your smart phone, because that day that guy had the idea to do this thing that nobody told him to do it, he just realized it and he was using a device called the mouse.

另一方面，SRI当时被选为因特网的节点，这就是高等研究计划署网络（ARPANET）。这就是因特网的起源。军方选择了SRI作为因特网的节点，他们就有了一群不同寻常的工程师。1968年，SRI其中一位工程师做了一件很不寻常的事情，他与另一位工程师身处两个不同的城市，但是他们利用电脑来沟通交流。你现在可能会说有什么了不起的，我们还用智能手机交流呢！但是正是因为他们，你才能够用移动网络交流。没有人告诉这位工程师要怎么做，但是他就是做到了。他还使用了一种叫做鼠标的设备。

So you realize that the culture of risk that was there, the culture of doing something crazy and stupid the culture of experimenting in everything, have a huge impact on the technology. Because this was a place where any new technology would become a toy, you play with it, you see what you can do, what what kind of interesting things I could do? Then you explain Apple and Google and Facebook, so the rest of the history of Silicon Valley to me is easy. We tend to think oh Jobs, Zuckerberg， these are all such heroes. To me they're not, just the silicon valley was producing so many of these new ideas, some of them got rich, and of course these are probably the people were very determined. Steve Jobs was famous for being stubborn, but he also took a lot of risk. When I met Steve Jobs I think nineteen eighty four, it was a failure, he was fired by Apple. He was starting again with another crazy idea called Next, and he was not doing well, so even these people took a lot of risk. 

你会发现，旧金山湾区有一种冒险的文化，鼓励做蠢事的文化、鼓励做实验的文化，这就鼓励了技术的发展。在那里，技术就像玩具一样，你可以拿技术来玩，你会知道自己能够做什么，可以做什么样有趣的事情。在这样的社会背景下才有了Facebook，Google这些企业。我们会觉得乔布斯、扎克伯格都是奇才，但我不会这样想。硅谷就是有很多新的想法，有的人可以因此致富而已。当然，这也是因为有的人特别坚定。我们都知道乔布斯以固执闻名。但乔布斯也是个爱冒险的人。我在1984年和他见面时，他当时挺失败的，还被苹果炒了鱿鱼。乔布斯那时又有一个疯狂的想法Next，但他并没有做的很好。即使是这些奇才也冒了很多风险。

The other thing is important people talk too much about Steve Jobs, and not enough about Steve Wozniak. That's another thing that is important, a lot of these people became famous. They started because they wanted something for themselves, they were not thinking this will become a big product, they were thinking I want this thing to exist that because I want to use it. So Wozniak build the Apple One was just to show it to his friends and to use it. It was his hobby. It is amazing because he built a hardware, the software all by himself. In those days it was really difficult to have the knowledge to do these things. He found out how to put a cassette recorder, and how to put the memory and the electronics, and then he wrote the software that you can use, and so on. He was not thinking some day we sell millions of copies of this. He was very happy to use it himself Mark Zuckerberg and his friends create Facebook, for what?  For them.  Larry Page and Sergey Brin create Google, why ? Because they didn’t like the existing search engines for them. So there's a lot of these stories that are about young people they just want something for them. It's more like a hobby. The difference is that in Silicon Valley people really like you for doing that, and you find a lot of support, you show it to your friends. Steve Wozniak was going to this club called the Homebrew Computer Club, and it was the meetings where Stanford linear accelerator hanged out, it's a place for a nuclear physicist it's not a place for venture capitalists, and it's not a place to sell computers. They were meeting there and they were showing the things. Steve Wozniak was showing his Apple One to his friends, not to the venture capitalist, not to the customers, to his friends. Jobs was the businessman, but we focus too much on Jobs The Salesman and not too much on Wozniak. He actually built it and he did it just for fun. So that's the spirit.

另外一个值得注意的地方是，人们过于关注乔布斯，而没有注意到Steve Wozniak。很多人出名了，但他们最初创业的时候想到的是自己要做的事情，而不是做出一个大卖的产品。他们发明的原因就是因为他们想用这样东西。Steve Wozniak做出了Apple 1，然后向朋友展示，这是他的一个小爱好。Wozniak非常厉害，因为电脑的硬件和软件都是他自己做的。在那个年代，很少有人拥有这样的知识能够做一台电脑。他知道怎样放盒式磁带，如何储存，他弄好了电子元件，写好了软件，而他当时并没有想到要卖出上万台电脑。他为能够用这样的电脑感到开心。

扎克伯格和他的朋友们一起创办Facebook是为什么呢？就是为了他们的朋友啊。拉里·佩奇和谢尔盖·布林因为不喜欢当时的搜索引擎所以就共同创建了Google。事实上，如果你在硅谷做这些事情，人们会很喜欢，你会得到很多的支持。你可以和朋友分享你的发明创造。Steve Wozniak还参加过Homebrew Computer Club，这是一个斯坦福核物理学家的聚集地。那里没有风险投资，也没有人会推销自己的产品，他们只是单纯展示自己的发明。Steve Wozniak就在那里向朋友展示了Apple One，而乔布斯只是推销员。我们过多关注乔布斯，而没有注意到这个真正做出了Apple One的人。他只是觉得好玩才做出了这台电脑。这就是硅谷精神。

And social media I mean, when the internet came it was running on this operating system called Unix.  It is still the most used operating system for the internet. Unix was invented by AT&T, the was the biggest company in the world luckily because it was so big the government told the AT&T you cannot make money with this thing, so the government basically forced it to give it away for free.  So it gave a copy to Berkeley, and the most famous version of Unix became the Berkerly version of Unix.  When I came here I started working on the Unix operating system, and why we young people like the Unix operating system? Because it was possible to exchange messages, email and they were groups where you could post news like social media. That's the beginning of social media. These people at UC Berkerly started using operating system as social media but that was been invented by the biggest corporation in the world, not as a social media tools.  See there's so many of these examples. The man was in charge of the Berkeley Unix started a very important company called Sun. Sun was one of the most influential companies in the Silicon Valley. So there's so many examples where you see this attitude of the technology. Actually technologies, like personal computer were not invented here, it was somebody far away who invented, who was selling it by my mail. And the Internet was invented by the government in Washington, and then Boston. So all of this was invented somewhere else, but when it comes to Silicon Valley，this idea of technology, that “okay there is a new technology, what do I do with it now”.

再看看社交媒体。最初有因特网的时候，很多人还是用Unix系统。Unix是AT&T发明的，当时AT&T是世界上最大的公司，所以政府告诉他们不能通过Unix来赚钱。可以说，政府迫使AT&T免费放出Unix操作系统。AT&T把Unix给了Berkeley，后来最出名的就是Berkeley版本的Unix操作系统。我刚到硅谷的时候，就用Unix系统工作。年轻人喜欢Unix的原因是你可以用它来发邮件，发布新闻动态，把它当作是个社交媒体。这就是社交媒体的起源。这些在UC Berkeley的人开始把Unix用作社交媒体。但大公司AT&T发明这个操作系统的时候，并没有想过把它做成社交媒体。后来，UC Berkeley创办了一个很重要的公司Sun。Sun曾经是硅谷最具影响力的公司。硅谷最重要的是理念，而非发明。我和你提到的技术基本都不是在硅谷发明的，个人电脑就不是在硅谷诞生的，而是一个在其他地方的人发明的，然后通过电子邮件来销售。因特网是美国政府在华盛顿发明的，所有的东西都是在其他地方发明的。

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