The Building Chipper Shredder

I live in the heart of Silicon Valley.  I've been here since July of 2012, so it's coming up on six years now.

The face of the valley is constantly changing.  The area I live in, the area I work in, are subject to cycles of demolition and development.  I've posted a couple of pictures along the way that have shown different sides of this.  I like to go for occasional walks when I'm at work, and these walks have given me "snapshots" of these cycles.  Two blocks from the office I work in, they have leveled eight or nine buildings.  I watched as the different buildings, which were not all that old, were emptied out, and came down.

Today there are steel skeletons stretching up four stories.  They are cropping up like pines on scorched black earth, toward the skies.

I am fascinated by the process.

One of the most interesting phases of this development was after the existing buildings were leveled.  All of the buildings had stone and concrete outer structures, leaving huge chunks of these outer shells scattered about.  As these buildings came down, a large contraption was placed on the former site of two of them.  Essentially, it was a chipper-shredder of doom, chomping down on these big chunks, and leaving an impromptu mountain of rubble on the other side.

The mountain grew pretty damned high.

Then it disappeared.  A sort of ebb and flow of stone that would take many millennia to shape in nature.

I've watched as the monoliths of technology, Google, Microsoft, Apple, Linkedin, and others, have gobbled up land and sprung up new, sleek and shiny buildings.  It's a fascinating process, but I can't help but wonder if the need behind the growth supports the level of that growth.

Since I was a boy, I loved to watch things grow.  Plants, trees, buildings, animals, people.  As I have gotten older, and stopped growing myself, I more deeply understand the nature of growth, and the inevitability of decay.  I see potentials, both positive and negative, in rapid growth.

I have no idea what to expect from the growth that seems to be encircling me, but it is fascinating to watch it.

Happy Saturday from Silicon Valley.