Silicon Valley Renaissance: An Interview with Michel L. Hackworth, Co-founder of Cirrus Logic

Michael L. Hackworth discusses the Renaissance parallels in Silicon Valley.

Michael Hackworth (1941-2012) was the co-founder of Cirrus Logic and a well-known Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist. This is a segment from the full unscripted interview.

Michael Hackworth 1995 Interview
Interview date: July 13, 1995
Interviewer: John McLaughlin, Historian and President of the Santa Clara Valley Historical Association

Interviewer's question:
"Could you talk about the Renaissance parallels?"

Transcript:
". . . My daughter is an art history major getting her Ph.D. in Renaissance art of all things. So I gave her a call just to kind of talk about this. What does the Renaissance mean to you and how would you see it applying to Silicon Valley? But the whole phenomenon of the Renaissance was one of recovering from the Dark Ages and going back to a lot of classics whether it was in the art or in the sciences. And then an intense era of learning, discovery, free-thinking, tying back to those classic principles and the period. The amount of advancement that took place during that was just incredible whether it was in art, whether it was in sculpture, whether it was in architecture. Architecture was one of the main focus points. Science, of course, and I was trying to draw a parallel with her and thinking about Silicon Valley. And the thing is that it's really what’s going on here. We didn’t have a Dark Ages as I would describe it in the 19th century by any means. But what’s gone on in the electronics and in the people here are very much in my mind what must have gone on with the sculptors, the artists, the architects, the scientists. Just a whole new world opening up every day because of the free-thinking and the amount of learning that would take place in a given day would lead to a whole new set of learning the next day, and a whole new set of progress the following day. And so what must have gone on in that period must be very, very similar to what’s going on now. And the impact that it had on the world at that time was enormous in terms of cultural integration and communication. And the impact of what electronics is having on the world today is incredibly profound. The power of people to know what’s going on and understanding — communicate with each other around the world — really breaks down cultural barriers that were impossible to do because of distance, time, and language. And the ability to solve problems mathematically, whether it’s a business problem or analyze whether it’s a business problem. Or a scientific problem, do it as rapidly as we do today and to share that information as real-time as we do today, is going to have, has had, and will continue to have an enormous profound impact. It’s probably the funnest time in my life right now to see the rate of change going on and I only wish that I could be around fifty years from now to see what the impact will be because it’s going to be incredibly profound."

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