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Well, the big products in electronics in the '50s were radio and television. The first big computers were just beginning to come in and represented the most logical market for us to work in.

The electronics industry expanded rapidly and the seeds for the semiconductor and software revolution were planted. The postwar period also saw the suburbanization of America, the rise of the homeowner, the build-out of the interstate highway system, and the rise of automobile culture. Credit availability expanded dramatically.

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

When I was a young man in the 1970s, tech firms were scattered across the developed world. Since then, America has come to dominate tech almost totally.

Look at what Silicon Valley has done - the advance of computers.

It had not yet been named Silicon Valley, but you had the defense industry, you had Hewlett-Packard. But you also had the counter-culture, the Bay Area. That entire brew came together in Steve Jobs.

You couldn't have fed the '50s into a computer and come out with the '60s.

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.

The problem is that there are very few technologies that essentially haven't changed for 60, 70 years.

I got lucky because my dad moved us to Silicon Valley before it really was known worldwide as an important tech hub.