---

• n  a tetravalent nonmetallic element; next to oxygen it is the most abundant element in the earth's crust; occurs in clay and feldspar and granite and quartz and sand; used as a semiconductor in transistors

• The search for a successor to silicon has become a kind of crusade; it is the Holy Grail of computation.
• From the viewpoint of bioengineering, a silicon chip is a large and rather complex shard of glass.
• What's more, silicon (as in sand) is abundant and harmless.

• Si
• atomic number 14

News & Articles

---

• Silicon Valley venture capitalist gets stay-away order against man who calls himself 'God'
  Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla got a stay-away order Thursday for man calling himself "God" who repeatedly demanded millions to guarantee "salvation."
  June 15, 2013 - Contra Costa Times
• Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla gets stay-away order against man who calls himself 'God'
  Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla got a stay-away order Thursday for man calling himself 'God' who repeatedly demanded millions to guarantee 'salvation.'
  June 14, 2013 - San Jose Mercury News
• Silicon Valley stars take off on British Airways 'UnGrounded' flight to London 'to change the world'
  After months of buildup, a British Airways jumbo jet carrying more than 100 Silicon Valley emissaries lifted off Wednesday on a mission to change the world. During the 12-hour flight from San Francisco to London, participants in the "UnGrounded" initiative were charged with coming up with ways to address the global disparity of science, math and technology education.
  June 13, 2013 - Contra Costa Times

Quotes

---

• John Simpson in BBC News
  There are much stronger privacy laws in Europe than here, where privacy is viewed as a consumer protection issue as opposed to a fundamental human right,the group's John Simpson told BBC News. "We see that a number of Silicon Valley...
• Mark Dean in Forbes
  What we're discovering with spintronics, compared with GMR,said Mark Dean, director of IBM's Almaden Research Center in San Jose, Calif., "is like comparing silicon to the vacuum tube."
• Barack Obama in Washington Post
  Speaking of Medvedev, Obama said: "And during his visit to Silicon Valley this week, he visited the headquarters of Twitters, where he opened his own account. I have one as well, so we may be able to finally throw away those 'red phones' that have...