Before the Trillions, There Was Once Joy in Silicon Valley
Jeff Schechtman 06/12/26 (whowhatwhy.org)
A veteran of three tech eras on how the innocence was lost — and whether AI actually might win it back, through what he calls “enlightened AI.”
Before the trillion-dollar IPOs, before the data centers and the doom, before “Silicon Valley” became shorthand for unaccountable power and unimaginable wealth, there was a teenager with an Atari — a gift from his NASA-engineer father — certain he could build any world he could imagine.
That teenager was Matthew Stepka, and the world he helped build is the one we’re all now straining to make sense of.
This week on the WhoWhatWhy podcast, Stepka — early internet-café founder, McKinsey alum, nine-year Google veteran who shepherded many of the company’s mission projects including the first self-driving cars, and now an investor in what he calls “enlightened AI” — walks us back through the Valley’s reinventions and asks what each one cost.
It’s a conversation about corporate reasons for being. Tech, nearly alone among industries, has always needed one — a reason its products are not merely lucrative but good for society. Stepka was inside the rooms where those stories were told without irony, and where they curdled into punchlines.
He’s candid about how the land of the nerds, where you felt you could solve any problem, drifted into something harsher.
But this is no eulogy to a more innocent age. It’s an argument that the innocence is recoverable — that AI might amplify our humanity rather than hollow it out. Stepka would rather be called hopeful than optimistic. The difference, it turns out, is the whole story.
As today’s headlines fill with the SpaceX IPO, here’s a longer view.
- Jeff Schechtman Jeff Schechtman’s career spans movies, radio stations, and podcasts. After spending twenty-five years in the motion picture industry as a producer and executive, he immersed himself in journalism, radio, and, more recently, the world of podcasts. To date, he has conducted over ten thousand interviews with authors, journalists, and thought leaders. Since March 2015, he has produced almost 500 podcasts for WhoWhatWhy.
The dark side of AI – Exploitation of humans and nature
DW Documentary Jun 10, 2026 Magical, autonomous, all-powerful: Artificial intelligence fuels our dreams and nightmares. While tech companies promise us a better future, AI is already causing serious harm. Huge data centers and server farms are required for AI programs to function. These are paving over landscapes and consuming immense amounts of water and electricity — mostly from fossil fuels, and thus dirty energy sources. Millions of low-wage workers worldwide are busy feeding data to, and training, the algorithms for AI programs — often at the expense of their mental and emotional health. These workers, many of them young and living in the Global South, are exposed to all manner of harmful content to train AI models to detect such material.
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Your Bathtub Bulletin editor in action
Phoenix Extraterrestrial flyover (in 1997)
- Google AI Overview
The “Phoenix extraterrestrial flyover” refers to the historic Phoenix Lights on March 13, 1997, when thousands of people across Arizona and Nevada witnessed a silent, massive V-shaped or boomerang-shaped formation of lights gliding across the night sky. It remains one of the most famous and debated mass UFO sightings in U.S. history. [1, 2, 3]
The 1997 Event
- The Sighting: Between 7:30 p.m. and 10:30 p.m., lights were seen moving from the Nevada state line, passing through Phoenix, and hovering near Tucson. [1, 2]
- The Craft: Many witnesses, including trained pilots and law enforcement, described a massive, solid, slow-moving object (sometimes said to be miles wide) that floated completely silently. [1, 2, 3, 4]
- High-Profile Witnesses: Arizona Governor Fife Symington and celebrity pilot Kurt Russell publicly acknowledged witnessing the inexplicable spectacle. [1, 2]
Official Explanations vs. The Mystery
Despite civilian accounts of a massive alien spacecraft, the military and government offered earthly explanations for both occurrences that night: [1, 2, 3]
- The V-Shaped Lights: The Air National Guard identified this as a formation of A-10 Thunderbolt II aircraft performing night training exercises. [1, 2]
- The Stationary Lights: The subsequent glowing orbs that hovered over Phoenix were identified as long-burning parachute illumination flares dropped during a pilot training operation at the Barry Goldwater Range. [1, 2]
Many researchers, witnesses, and skeptics continue to debate whether the flare explanation adequately accounts for the immense, solid structure described by thousands of onlookers. [1, 2]
For a closer look at the footage captured by witnesses on that evening and the enduring debate around what hovered above the city:
Phoenix Lights and UFO Sightings Investigative … The CW Network YouTube · Dec 20, 2025
(Contributed by Clint Lambert)
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