從不同的角度看矽谷，"Being a Writer in Silicon Valley." 在講求科技、創業、速度的矽谷，一個需要慢慢打磨精鍊的作家是怎麼感受的呢？目前的科技榮景和1849年的掏金熱有什麼相似之處？我過去提到許多矽谷的優缺點，不同角度的觀察又是如何？不論你是軟體工程師、作家、在矽谷工作、在台灣或其他地方生活，相信你都會有所體悟收穫。
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It was a time of paramount uncertainty, and as I procrastinated on my own job search, I found myself researching the gold rush in 1849—because that was why we were here, wasn’t it—to find money? Somewhere in the back of my mind, I recalled Brian mentioning something about dreams and entrepreneurship, but with both of us unemployed, the focus became loud and clear: this was about paying the rent. We had uprooted ourselves from our once stable life and journeyed all the way here, just as gold-seekers did in the nineteenth century. Like them, we had spent a big chunk of our savings on the equivalent of picks, shovels, and pans—the mining supplies, and still we had not uncovered a speck of gold.
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There have been three phases in my Silicon Valley journey: the panic and desperation that we weren’t ever going to find any gold; the irrational frenzy when I believed I would uncover as much gold as I wanted so long as I kept digging; and now, reality setting in.
It’s been two years since we first arrived, and every day I ask myself what it means, exactly, to live in Silicon Valley. I ask it as I sit in Bay Area’s notorious deadlock traffic, both to and from work. I ask it as a friend loses the bidding war for a two-million-dollar house in Palo Alto, not because he can’t afford the mortgage, but because someone else is paying in full cash. I ask it as a summer intern from Canada tells me he is paying twelve hundred dollars a month to share a house in Mountain View with twenty-three other tenants. They each get a bunk bed and collectively share two bathrooms, so he showers and brushes his teeth at work.
Stories like these are countless, and are the usual topic of conversation both at work and in my social life. I’ve been hearing them from the moment I arrived at Silicon Valley, and I find myself contributing more and more anecdotes, even as I grow sick of them. In my two years, I’ve already seen so many people come and go. Here, everyone is just passing through: there is the influx of hopeful newcomers, like I myself once was, and there is the overwhelming number of people leaving, moving to Seattle, Reno, Portland, San Diego, Tuscan. The reasons for departure are all different but also the same: they can’t afford to buy a house, the schooling is too competitive for their kids, there’s no time for anything but work. I used to listen to these stories with a streak of rebellion, believing I would be the exception to the rule; now, I scoff at my former naiveté.
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Brian is forever encouraging me to churn out my writing following the “minimum viable product” concept, a golden rule software developers use to push out a new product with just enough features to get by, and then fine-tune it afterwards. There is a print out on our wall of two donuts to explain this theory: one donut is plain—so plain it barely passes for a donut except that there is clearly a hole at the center; the other is the donut of everyone’s dreams, glazed with strawberry icing and rainbow sprinkles. Brian suggests I focus my energy on baking a tray-full of stories that are like the first donut—rudimentary, but functional—before I worry about the fancy decoration. But that’s not how art works, I cry. In art, rarely does one start out with a clear blueprint of the end product in mind. I have to feel my way, maybe work backwards and start with the rainbow sprinkles; I may discover half-way into the process that the donut I’m trying to make is actually a bagel, or even a cake. These are the arguments I make, anyway, to justify why I still haven’t baked all those stories.
But what do I know? My husband may be right, and that may be exactly how I should be writing—after all, it may require an unconventional approach for a writer to continue writing in Silicon Valley.
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http://www.everywritersresource.com/being-a-writer-in-silicon-valley/
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