Growing from the 1950s Stanford University Industrial Park, a university project to facilitate corporate and academic ties in research and development, “Silicon” Valley became the model for high-tech entrepreneurship and lifestyle in computers and related industries. This aura of constantly shifting boundaries of information and processing, instant billionaires and soaring realestate prices belied problems. These include the need for unskilled and low-paid workers in computer assembly (often third-world women), the lack of public culture and service centers and the fragility of technology rapidly exported to offshore assembly areas. Nonetheless, this technosuburb has provided both a model and a nickname for other research/production complexes like Massachusett’s Route 128 and New York’s Silicon Alley (as well as global avatars).