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- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Unfortunately, much of the rest of the world would love to be like Silicon Valley. In one subgenre of the Valley success-myth article, a journalist visits the high-tech heart of a foreign country and asks, "Does this self-styled Silicon Glen/Alley/Gulch/Fjord/Pampas/Polder/Fen have what it takes to match the success of the original?" Precisely because the Valley possesses the Renaissance qualities of being dynamic, entrepreneurial, innovative and wildly financially successful, it has become a model the rest of the world is keen to follow. But if what's being emulated places little value in old ideas of culture and has little interest in developing new ones, aren't we all aspiring to a debased ideal -- to an impoverished kind of Renaissance, devoid of much that makes life rich? Florence had entrepreneurial energy, education, ambition and technology; it also attracted Giotto, Donatello, Dante, Michelangelo, Brunelleschi, Petrarch and others besides. Who can Silicon Valley point to? If the Valley wants to find a way out of the binary thinking that opposes business success and high culture, it only has to look to Renaissance Florence for help. In his "The Building of Renaissance Florence," historian Richard A. Goldthwaite -- in an economic analysis rigorous enough to warm the heart of any Valley CFO -- considered the Florentine approach of building for prestige, history and art's sake and reckoned its worth to the city's economy. The building of the great architectural monuments of Renaissance Florence, he concludes, "resulted in considerable internal development and, ultimately, a more mature economy." Silicon Valley is built on just two industries, computers and biotech. A program of truly world-class building may be just what it needs to relieve it of its narrow reliance on them. If it goes this route, though, a lot of habits will have to change before it reaches Florentine standards. Florentine businessmen would think nothing of spending a third of their entire wealth on their private residence. By contrast, Larry Ellison, the nearest the Valley has to a Medici, is building himself a 20,000-square-foot retro-Japanese villa complex -- but is lavishing on it a mere $40 million of his multibillion-dollar fortune. Perhaps it's just too early to decide if the revolution emanating from the Valley is truly a new Renaissance. Florence became what visitors see today over many decades. In the early days of the Renaissance, it was a rough town, plagued with the 14th century equivalent of the Bloods and the Crips fighting it out in the streets. The initial impetus for many of its greatest public works came from the pressures of pollution, land shortages and wars between factions (although the city was careful to legislate from the beginning for "beauty and dignity," as well as for health and safety). Money in Silicon Valley is young, too. It took the barons of the U.S. automobile industry 40 years to start using their fortunes for patronage and philanthropy. And there are signs that things may be changing in the Valley. An organization called Smart Valley is trying to address the conurbation's shortcomings in town planning, transport and education. Nonprofit foundations like those set up by William Hewlett and David Packard are bestowing generous sums of money in the Valley -- if not always toward projects that cut the cultural edge. Xerox PARC now has a resident artists program that truly does push art in new directions, and the influx of artists into the multimedia industries is changing the Valley's cultural outlook as well. But given its status in the world, Silicon Valley would be doing us all a favor if it went much further -- if it patronized the most interesting of the world's artists, architects and musicians in really significant numbers; if it started to spend much more of its wealth on projects we can all see and share and that will endure. To spark a renaissance takes presumption and self-confidence. Silicon Valley has shown it has both in abundance. It is a special place. But we can best honor its achievements by holding it to a high standard. The people who are making their remarkable fortunes in the Valley need to take on the full breadth of the responsibility that comes with their assumption that they are unique. Only when they admit they are a part of a society, when they broaden their horizons to include the full scope of human endeavor and lasting achievement, will the Valley become a worthy model to the world. And only then will its citizens be able to rightly name themselves the Florentines of today.
Simon Firth is a writer and television producer living in Silicon Valley.
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