Here are three potential subjects for future Fora. Each offers an opportunity to experiment with the scope of Forum subjects, the size of our potential audience, and the role of moderators in the discussion.
The Program has receieved some attention in the history of Silicon Valley, and is described in general terms as having "strengthened ties between firms and the university and allowed engineers to keep up-to-date technically and to build professional contacts." (Saxenian, Regional Advantage, 23) But we don't actually have much detail yet about how the program helped companies, how it affected careers, etc..
The virtue of this Forum is that the coop graduates are a clearly identifiable group: either you were a member or you weren't. Talking to graduates would give us a view from the ground of how coop members were selected (was it a reward for good work? an incentive to keep people from leaving?), the value of courses for students and teachers (how valuable was the content? did it serve as a forum for professional networking?), the experience of early distance learning, and the place of the program in technical and managerial careers. We could also compare the ways the program was used by small versus large companies.
A number of writers have commented that there is a connection between the countercultural movement of the Sixties and the development of personal computing in the 1970s and 1980s. Some prominent people made the leap from counterculture to computing. Stewart Brand, founder of the Whole Earth Catalog, was later involved in the Well and Electronic Frontier Foundation; Bill Joy, a veteran of the Free Speech Movement, cofounded Sun Microsystems; Mitchell Kapor went from cybernetics and TM to Lotus.
But is this just a demographic bump-- analagous to discovering large numbers of veterans among managers in the 1950s-- or is there a deeper, cultural connection between the counterculture and the history of computing? Theodore Roszak argued that the spiritual values of the counterculture later found expression in personal computing. The PC was attractive to "talented drop-outs going their own way and... outflanking the lumbering giants of the industry, beating them to the punch with a people's computer" that would serve individuals and populist democracy rather than centralized, bureaucratic authorities. (Roszak, From Satori to Silicon Valley, 35) Even if the PC wasn't seen as a tool for smashing the barricades, perhaps the counterculture's complicated affection for technology-- expressed best in the Whole Earth Catalog, and its infatuation with craft-work and tinkering-- influenced computer clubs and serious enthusiasts.
This Forum would differ from the Honors Cooperative Program Forum in a couple ways. The potential contributors would be a much more diffuse group: anyone over 30 would have a claim to the discussion, and doubtless some writers would simply have opinions, not useful contributions to the historical record. The discussion would also require a significant amount of moderating by SiliconBase staff: bad responses would have to be culled, interesting points encouraged, potential contributors tracked down.
It is a commonplace that "it's all right to fail" in Silicon Valley. However, the simplicity of that telegraphic declaration almost certainly obscures a more complicated reality. Other high-risk professions (such as medicine and the military) have a public toleration of failure, along with well-articulated rules defining what kinds of failures are excusable, noble, or useful. Doubtless such rules exist in Silicon Valley; we just don't know exactly what they are.
The purpose of this Forum would be to encourage people to contribute stories that illuminate the question, "How is it all right to fail in Silicon Valley?" It would explore the kinds of failures (are they divided into personal, commercial, technical, etc., or are such divisions considered illegitimate); the uses of failure (i.e., failure as learning and maturing device); and the apparent paradox that failure is honored in some of the same ways as success.
It might be useful to start things off by publishing opinions from some VCs, entrepreneurs, and lawyers, to stimulate discussion and give people something to respond to. Again, this is a subject that would require some moderation and guidance, but as much of the discussion would probably be rooted in professional experiences, it would have a greater degree of solidity than the discussion of the counterculture.