Kinda odd that the article names the Palo Alto Stock Farm as the "first tech giant" when it was Stanford's - the man, not the place - 6th industry to enter (lawyer, merchant, railroads, insurance, wineries, horses). Several of those - like selling equipment to 49ers, or completing the first transcontinental railroad - would be much more closely identified with "tech" than horses. Indeed, the outsize role of horses mentioned in the article was already being cannibalized by railroads when Stanford entered the business; arguably this is him entering the wrong side of history for nostalgia's sake.
The article has a very Malcolm Gladwell feel: take liberty with the facts and misrepresent what's important, so that you can write something that nobody else is focusing on, seem novel and interesting, and get lots of clicks or magazine sales.
Speaking of tech and horse farms, one of the early founders of Cisco cashed out pretty early (as I recall for a couple of hundred million, a small amount compared to what the company stock valuation inflated to during the peak of the dotcom 1.0 boom years) and retired to breed horses.
I do think there is a fable to be told about horses and american innovation, where horsemanship was rarefied and exclusive in europe and asia, but a basic necessity to survive in frontier america, and the moral protagonism horsemanship requires just to stay on one - which has been the basis for an officer class education for millenia - was spread more broadly and accessibly, and so americans invented "bootstrapping" as a part of their culture.
Farming is engineering, and city culture was really successful at retelling the story of the engineers they depend on as bumpkins. I'd wonder if, owing to their respective necessities and incentives (and layers of abstraction), cities mainly produce art and culture and people out in the country produce technology and engineering?
> one of the most unequal and competitive school districts
That's literally impossible. Competitiveness necessarily includes equal opportunity. If demographics constitute >0% of the rubric, then by necessity merit constitutes <100%
Biased competition can result in unequal opportunities. One common example is a vocabulary question using culturally significant terms to favor or disadvantage some specific group.
> Competitiveness necessarily includes equal opportunity
No, it doesn't. Professional (American) football is highly competitive despite the fact that opportunity to excel is distributed very unequally. Women, for example, are extremely unlikely to be competitive in pro football, as is anyone with any kind of physical disability, or anyone over (say) 50.
In academics, children of parents who value learning are much more likely to excel than children of parents who think there is no value in reading.
But the remaining pool of candidates can still represent formidable competition.
The article has a very Malcolm Gladwell feel: take liberty with the facts and misrepresent what's important, so that you can write something that nobody else is focusing on, seem novel and interesting, and get lots of clicks or magazine sales.