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We who work in technology have nurtured an especially rare gift: the opportunity to effect change at an unprecedented scale and rate. Technology, community, and capitalism combine to make Silicon Valley the potential epicenter of vast positive change.

The entire world is now a rival to Silicon Valley. No country, state, region, nor city has a lock on innovation in technology anymore.

What I found in Silicon Valley is an industry that's sort of been kept a very far remove from Washington and had an attitude of 'Just let us do our thing and make the miracles that people love around the world and leave us alone.'

If the whole U.S. was like Silicon Valley, we'd be in good shape. But now, the entire U.S. is not driven by technology, is not driven by innovation.

A remarkable thing about the Silicon Valley culture is that its status structure is so based on technical accomplishment and prowess.

Silicon Valley has been a technology capital like New York is a financial capital.

What people often ask me is, 'What are the ingredients of Silicon Valley?' While the answer to that is complex, some of the ingredients I talk about are celebrating entrepreneurship, accepting failure, and embracing a mobile and diverse workforce.

I've been reading a lot about Silicon Valley history recently and was struck by just how core the lack of unions has been to the American tech industry's evolution. It's enabled the constant creative destruction that keeps Silicon Valley relevant and thriving in a rapidly changing world.

A lot of the geeks in Silicon Valley will tell you they no longer believe in the ability of policymakers in Washington to accomplish anything. They don't understand why people end up in politics; they would do much more good for the world if they worked at Google or Facebook.

When I first came to the Bay area, I worked in Silicon Valley in the early to mid-'90s, and I think what mattered then was our ability as designers to create a vision around people's ideas.