[cft]

Silicon Valley has come a long way from 1966: from cutting edge material science http://youtu.be/z47Gv2cdFtA to applying open source sepia filter...

I am afraid that the logical end of this race to the bottom in terms of technology is the end of the Silicon Valley (perhaps something like Hollywood for "new media" replacing technology)

[stephenrcarter]

Consumer-facing products are always going to garner the most press, but that doesn't mean more technically interesting things aren't going on as well.

There are tons of core technology startups in Silicon Valley - we just don't talk about them on YCombinator very much. I find the software defined datacenter space really interesting. Check out Nutanix: A startup that aims to redefine enterprise datacenter architecture. Or how about the recent acquisition of Nicira (a software defined networking company) by VMware. Just look at Khosla Ventures product portfolio: http://www.khoslaventures.com/information-technology.html. Food science startups, semiconductor, enterprise hardware/software, AND social media. The whole gamut.