Fearless Genius: The Digital Revolution in Silicon Valley 1985-2000

by Doug Menuez

  I photographed various hardware companies building everything from PCs, workstations, mainframes, Cray supercomputers and pen-based handheld computers, to virtual-reality goggles and gaming consoles, to chip manufacturers, communications and networking companies, and software companies with products for desktop publishing, business, gaming and entertainment, security, transportation, health care and education, plus a wide range of internet start-ups and even some biotech ventures. Some companies approached me as word got around about what I was doing, and some I approached, usually after an insider would tip me off to a special project. I always had my regular assignments from magazines and commercial clients throughout those years, and sometimes they overlapped.

  I photographed with several concerns in mind. First, I wanted to record the daily lives of the people inside these companies, without PR oversight, capturing moments of interaction between workers while looking for patterns of behavior and emotion. I wanted to understand the human side of technology and was curious about what motivates some people to rise up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles, while others have an overwhelming aversion to any risk-taking at all. Some people started companies and some preferred to work for them. But the Valley seemed to attract a preponderance of those people willing to take risks. Perhaps more than anything else, I was interested in the nature of innovation and wanted to see if I could discover something about how creativity was best nurtured.

  Second, I also began photographing objects, documents, and environments. Having studied visual anthropology, I knew that this was data that others might later decode to draw conclusions about this new culture that had come to fascinate me. It came with its own language, social rites, and customs, all of which would soon radiate out to influence the larger society.

  I paid particular attention to any outward sign of stress. Showing vulnerability was in contrast to the public image projected by tech companies: a polished veneer of extreme competence, which their powerful PR teams displayed even if facing imminent failure.

  I became interested in the role of women and the impact of gender diversity (or lack thereof) in Silicon Valley. Could different worldviews change how code was written, and what might that mean for end users?

  During this era, the accelerating pace of innovation was affecting the very nature of work and the structure of corporations. The global business environment became an essential consideration as entire nations scaled up around the development and manufacture of new technology. Although Silicon Valley had become the center of American manufacturing around the time I began this project, as our economy shifted from steel and cars to chips and information, the pace of change was so extreme that even the buzzing factories of Silicon Valley had moved offshore by the time I ended my work. We had left the manufacturing-based economy and entered the information economy.

  The title Fearless Genius refers to those I observed who had true intellectual genius, usually in math and science, or a kind of genius of vision, combined with a rare ability to boldly pursue the power of their ideas to fruition or failure, risking everything they had—health, sanity, family, career. The sacrifice required to invent new technology was great and not understood by the outside world. Marriages dissolved, mothers raised babies in the labs they never left, engineers went insane, and one young programmer I knew committed suicide. Some went to jail for fraud. Millions of dollars were lost and billions gained, and failure was as much a part of the process as the staggering success that is more commonly associated with Silicon Valley.

  Every once in a while I’d witness a moment of sheer joy or sublime satisfaction, despite the hard work and frustration, as some engineer or team would make a breakthrough. Often, I was completely sucked into the emotional roller coaster they were riding, so I was naturally thrilled for their progress and dismayed by setbacks. The objective role I originally sought as a photojournalist fell away and I began to embrace a more subjective, interpretive approach. I maintained distance but was no longer able to remain completely neutral as I was now part of the team. I wanted them to succeed and build machines all of us would benefit by using.

  The radical growth of the PC industry was quickly followed by the rocket rise of the internet. The success of the Netscape IPO in 1995 started a new crazy clock called internet time, where even the manic intensity of the 1980s was not fast enough. Everyone I knew was starting a dot-com or going to work for one. Sadly, the early idealism I witnessed, where engineers would actually say things like “I want to build computers for kids in Africa,” soon turned into an unsustainable gold rush for IPOs. The “noble cause” described by Steve Jobs when I started out shooting, which felt interesting, risky, and inspiring to me, was getting hard to find.

  As the dot-com bubble collapsed in 2000, it was the end of a singular era, and I decided to close my project, putting my 250,000 negatives in storage for the time being. I needed a break from technology.

  In 2004, Stanford University acquired my archive for its library with the goal of preserving and sharing the material with scholars and historians. Their dogged and determined support got me inspired again and has allowed for the creation of this book.

  My journey through the Valley as a witness during this pivotal age was undoubtedly naive and cannot be definitive. But the project gave me new purpose. Like most photojournalists, I like to think photographs possess the power to change people’s long-held ideas about the world around them, perhaps even encouraging social change. The images I shot in Silicon Valley captured the people who were changing the world and made a record of their lives. That was my mission. It felt useful. I owe a tremendous debt to all those who generously allowed me to photograph them. I hope in some small way this book will help to honor their unparalleled legacy.

  The people I photographed were on a mission, too. They knew they’d make money, but that was not their primary goal. They wanted to build cool stuff that would change everything. Many of them wanted to improve the quality of human life. Why is having a mission important? Because money is not enough motivation for most people to walk through fire when things get tough. It’s about what is worth doing with your life and what you are willing to gamble to accomplish your dreams. This is the intangible human spirit, a creative force that can’t be quantified in the business plan but that might just be the one element every successful breakthrough technology has to have.

  To a hardened businessperson, it might sound simplistic or romantic to read my descriptions of the true believers of the prior era and their selfless fight to build new technology. The reality I saw was that nothing got accomplished without that passion, that deep desire to make the thing work.

  It is my hope that Fearless Genius will foster dialogue around issues related to the development of new technology and its impact on our lives—and the challenges we now face. Currently millions of science, technology, engineering, and math jobs go unfilled in the United States. We have failed to graduate kids interested in excelling in these fields. Since 2000, no important technology innovation in the United States has been scaled up to create millions of manufacturing, marketing, and engineering jobs here, as personal computers and related industries did. While selling online and social networking are clearly transformational movements that have created entrepreneurial opportunities, fewer than fifty thousand traditional jobs—those with full-time hours, benefits, and health insurance—have been created.

  One negative outcome of the dot-com crash was that a giant brake was put on innovation as investors sought shorter-term, lower-risk projects. Although another boom is now under way in Silicon Valley, complete with some cool ideas, it’s all about apps that can be released quickly because investors want their money out now in eighteen months. The “patient” money required for difficult, important technology development such as solving climate change has disappeared. The good news is that this lull we seem to be in is probably normal turbulence that happens between twenty-five-year technology-wave cycles. As Apple cofounder Steve Wozniak said, y
ou don’t get a world-changing product every year. The technology from twenty-five years ago is only now maturing, and we are starting to see its promise realized on a practical level through tremendously useful and creative products.

  And we can see an extraordinary new wave of technology development coming soon that will bring important advances through genomics, nanotech, sensors, quantum computing, 3-D printing, and other new technology. With access to cheap smartphones, a billion people in the developing world are predicted to come online in the next twelve months. This surge of humanity joining the digital revolution will surely result in a creative outpouring of ideas that will blow our minds. We just have to be sure to catch the wave when it gets here.

  In my travels, I see the lasting legacy of Silicon Valley innovation in every corner of the world. Every single day I use a laptop, a cell phone, or an app that had its origins in rooms I walked through back in the day. Silicon Valley remains the greatest engine for innovation the world has ever seen. Signs of a new idealism in the Valley are also apparent. For example, Stanford’s superhot design school is encouraging the growth of “double bottom line” businesses that offer practical technology solutions to developing countries at affordable prices while still making a profit. An energetic philanthropic movement led by Bill and Melinda Gates has expanded to include newcomers from Facebook, Google, and other companies with their own new foundations and corporate alumni who are doing significant work on such issues as disease, poverty, and education.

  We can certainly learn lessons from the digital revolution to help us meet the challenges we face today. The stories of those who built the world we live in now might just inspire the next generation of engineers and entrepreneurs to push beyond the expectations and limitations of our time, to find their own “mission impossible” and render it not only possible but accomplished.

  Beneath the vast enterprise and churn, I discovered the joyous, primal urge to invent tools that has driven human progress for millennia. I saw something uncontrollable, hungry, and wild—something human—that still exists in Silicon Valley today. That strain of fearless genius can and will drive a new technology revolution, perhaps even fulfilling the promises of the last one as it lifts its gaze to a world we have only begun to imagine.

  “I want some kid at Stanford to be able to cure cancer in his dorm room.”

  —Steve Jobs, on his hopes for what his new black-cubed NeXT workstation would do

  The Day Ross Perot Gave Steve Jobs $20 Million.

  Fremont, California, 1986.

  Steve was a consummate showman who understood the power of a compelling setting. This was never more apparent than at this incongruously formal lunch he hosted for Ross Perot and the NeXT board of directors in the middle of the abandoned warehouse he planned to turn into the NeXT factory. He told Perot that they were building the most advanced robotic assembly line in the world and that “no human hands” would be assembling hardware. He predicted that NeXT would be the last billion-dollar-a-year company in Silicon Valley and that they would ship ten thousand computers a month. Perot, who was then championing a movement to reform education in the United States, was blown away by the presentation and invested $20 million, becoming a key board member and giving NeXT a crucial lifeline.

  Steve Jobs Explaining Ten-Year Technology Development Cycles.

  Sonoma, California, 1986.

  Steve giving a history lesson about how technology evolves in ten-year wave cycles to his new NeXT team at an off-site meeting. Every few months, Steve and the fledgling company’s employees would travel to a retreat in the country with their families to grapple with myriad technical issues. There he would regularly hold talks to explain his vision for the company and to encourage his brilliant cofounders and employees to participate fully in its realization. Steve planned to ride the next wave by putting the power of a refrigerator-size mainframe computer into a one-foot cube at a price affordable to universities, thus “transforming education.” When I asked him what he meant by this, he said he wanted “some kid at Stanford to be able to cure cancer in his dorm room.” Because he absolutely believed this was possible, his whole team did. Behind this noble goal, Steve was also on a quest for redemption and revenge after being forced out at Apple in a humiliating boardroom coup after alienating key board members and his handpicked CEO, John Sculley. Most industry pundits believed NeXT would be a huge and rapid success, as did Steve. Instead, it was the start of a decade of difficult, often bitter struggle.

  The Start of the Start-Up.

  Palo Alto, California, 1985.

  NeXT cofounder Susan Kare walking through their brand-new headquarters on Deer Creek Road, where they were still adding employees and transforming the empty space into offices and labs. To succeed in Silicon Valley you first needed a great idea, a brilliant team, lots of money, and a space in which to create the dream. Often, one predictor of failure was the money spent on luxury furnishings at the start. But Steve had started Apple in a garage and was determined to launch his second company with top-of-the-line interior design everywhere you looked. After expanding into luxe offices in Redwood City a few years later, Steve commissioned architect I. M. Pei to build a floating cement staircase.

  Steve Jobs Considers a Response.

  Palo Alto, California, 1986.

  NeXT design director Eddie Lee said that Steve had a way of “smiling shit at you” when he was getting mad. His head would go down and he’d make this sort of uncomfortable half smile, and you knew you were about to get crushed. Decisions in early team meetings such as this one were fraught with tension because the team was writing its business plan as it went along. One pivotal decision made was to build both the hardware and the software for the NeXT computer, a vastly harder prospect than their original idea to build only software. While still shaping every detail of NeXT in early 1986, Steve also had the incredible foresight to recognize that something amazing was happening with digital animation at Lucasfilm. He capitalized a new spin-off company with $10 million of his own money. They named it Pixar.

  Susan Kare Is Part of Your Daily Life.

  Sonoma, California, 1987.

  It’s not a stretch to say that Susan Kare’s playful icons and user interface design have impacted the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people around the world. Susan was part of the original Mac team and designed the original Mac icons and much of the user interface. Leaving Apple with Steve after his ouster, she became a cofounder and creative director at NeXT Computer, where she oversaw the creation of its icons and logo, working with the legendary Paul Rand. Later she designed or redesigned icons for many other computer operating systems, including Windows and IBM’s OS/2. Here she’s listening to Steve at an off-site meeting with her colleague Kim Jenkins (right), as he discusses the unfinished tasks facing the company. Kim, a key member of the marketing team, came to NeXT from Microsoft, where the education division she started was profitable beyond anyone’s expectations, giving real competition to Apple, which had previously dominated the education market.

  Ninety Hours a Week to Change the World.

  Palo Alto, California, 1986.

  In the middle of a presentation to the NeXT team, Steve suddenly stopped and said, “Hey, everybody, let’s work nights and weekends until Christmas, and then we’ll take a week off.” One of the engineers in the back of the room responded meekly, “Um, Steve, we already are working nights and weekends.”

  The Shit List.

  Sonoma, California, 1987.

  A Steve Jobs to-do list made at an off-site brainstorming session listing a set of technical challenges remaining for his team to solve. While building the NeXT computer, Steve wanted to meet the challenge that Nobel laureate Paul Berg had set to build an affordable workstation for education that had more than one megabyte of memory, a megapixel display, and a megaflop of computing speed to allow a million floating-point operations per second. Today we measure in gigabytes and gigaflops, but at the time, combining these attributes presen
ted considerable technical hurdles.

  Steve Jobs Returning from a Visit to the New Factory.

  Fremont, California, 1987.

  Although Steve could be extremely rude, critical, and occasionally even vindictive, he also was incredibly joyful, with an infectious grin and energy that was irresistible. In the early days at NeXT, he would often come bounding in, hungry to get to work. Still, there were not too many unrestrained moments of hilarity such as this one, when Steve was riding back from a visit to the newly chosen factory site with the company employees in an old, rented yellow school bus.

  Bending the Laws of Physics.

  Santa Cruz, California, 1987.

  NeXT’s team of engineers, all leaders in their respective fields, were often stunned at the technological challenges Steve demanded that they solve. One engineer was described as “spitting mad” while arguing with Steve, but most of them also relished the challenges Steve posed. At a company off-site meeting, from left to right, NeXT cofounder and vice president of analog hardware engineering George Crow, NeXT cofounder and vice president of digital hardware engineering Rich Page, and software engineers Jean-Marie Hullot and Jack Newlin.

  Steve Jobs Outlining the Digital Revolution.

  Sonoma, California, 1986.

  Steve lists the workflow ahead for his team at a company meeting at a Sonoma resort. His outline included everything that remained to be converted from analog to digital. Indeed, everything in the world that was not by then digital would soon be, as the digital revolution raced ahead.