Flowers and weeds

The gift culture alone would not give birth to the innovation cluster of the Silicon Valley. There is also a compelling environment pursuing the frontiers of feasibility. The Silicon Valley is an area for hunters, not fishers.

I don't know the exact statistics, but it seems that Californians do not have the "killing instinct". After one or two generations, Californians become fishers. The killing instinct is therefore imported. California is a land of opportunities; however these opportunities are sized by non-conformists from the the East Coast, the Mid-West, and abroad.

Bob Metcalfe, the inventor of Ethernet and founder of 3Com, says that "invention is a flower, innovation is a weed", i.e. if you want to succeed, you don't have to be nice, but effective in proliferating your idea.

I haven't still figured out how can the flowers of a "gift culture" co-exist with the weeds with "killing instinct"...