Four eras of San Francisco tech culture

gist

Noah Smith maps San Francisco tech culture since 2001 into four eras: Rebel, Corporate, Interregnum, and AI. The public page covers Peninsula pre-history and the Rebel Era (2001-2012), when SF was the liberal, EFF-and-Burning-Man alternative to Sand Hill Road. He separates Rationalists (Extropian-descended AI-safety obsessives) from Effective Altruism, which entered that debate later.

ideas

• Four named eras structure the history. Smith lists Rebel (2001-2012), Corporate (2012-2019), Interregnum (2020-2022), and AI (2022-present) as distinct SF tech cultures.
• SF tech culture began on the Peninsula. Semiconductor and software clusters around Stanford and Sand Hill Road came first; San Francisco started as a media and party satellite before growing its own scene.
• The Rebel Era prized liberation over office-park success. Twitter, Burning Man, Noisebridge, psychedelics, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation marked a bohemian, hierarchy-flattening internet politics.
• White House EA talk mislabels the AI-safety target. Smith says the obsessives under fire are Rationalists descended from 1990s Extropians; EA is a separate movement that joined later.
• Rebel culture depended on a lack of money. Once money arrived, Smith writes, that socially flattened scene could not last.

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