There may be no richer Silicon Valley lore: It was 2004, Mark Zuckerberg’s summer of craziness. At 20, he and five buddies had rented a Palo Alto home, where they partied and wrote code for Facebook. One day, as Zuckerberg and the guys were strolling the neighborhood, he saw a familiar face. It was Sean Parker, the co-founder of Napster, the music sharing service. By coincidence, Parker, at loose ends and contemplating his next move, was staying at his girlfriend’s parents’ house, just up the street from the Facebook pad. The very next week, the big-thinking, smooth-talking Parker moved in with Zuckerberg and began introducing him around Silicon Valley. By the end of the summer, he had paved the way to Facebook’s first big investment — $500,000 from Peter Thiel.

Ť这里可能是没有丰富的硅谷的传说：那是2004年，疯狂的马克·扎克伯格的夏天。 在2 0时 ，他和五个伙伴租了一个Palo Alto房屋，在那里他们分手并为Facebook编写代码。 有一天，当扎克伯格和他们在附近漫步时，他看到了一张熟悉的面Kong。 音乐共享服务Napster的联合创始人肖恩·帕克(Sean Parker)。 碰巧的是，帕克徒劳无功，正在考虑下一步行动，当时他正待在女友父母的房子里，就在Facebook板子的街上。 在接下来的一周，雄心勃勃，说话畅通的Parker随扎克伯格(Zuckerberg)进驻，并开始向硅谷介绍他。 到夏天结束时，他已为Facebook的第一笔大笔投资铺平了道路-彼得·泰尔(Peter Thiel)的50万美元。

Thiel, who grew up in Silicon Valley and graduated from Stanford, had only recently landed a substantial payday himself. It went back to a providential lecture he delivered in 1998 at Stanford. One of the half dozen or so people present was a 23-year-old Ukrainian immigrant named Max Levchin — not a student, but a newcomer from Illinois who was there mostly to bask in the air conditioning and escape the sweltering summer heat. Afterward, Levchin approached Thiel. After a bit of chatting, Thiel asked why the young man was in town.

蒂尔(Thiel)在硅谷长大，从斯坦福大学毕业，直到最近才亲自获得丰厚的薪水。 它可以追溯到他于1998年在斯坦福大学发表的天文演讲。 在场的大约五分之一中的一位是23岁的乌克兰移民，名叫马克斯·列夫琴(Max Levchin)-不是学生，而是来自伊利诺伊州的新移民，他在那里主要是为了晒太阳并逃脱酷暑。 随后，列夫琴接近蒂尔。 聊了一会后，Thiel 问这个年轻人为什么在城里。

“Probably gonna start a company,” Levchin said.

列夫钦说：“可能会成立一家公司。”

“Oh, great,” Thiel replied, and suggested the two meet up the next day and talk more over smoothies.

“哦，太好了，” Thiel回答，并建议第二天见面，就冰沙谈更多。

Perhaps no phenomenon is more studied, marveled, and desired in the world of high tech and science than the mystery of serendipity.

在高科技和科学世界中，也许没有比偶然性的奥秘更能研究，惊叹和期望的现象了。

In 2002, eBay paid $1.5 billion for the resulting startup — Paypal, making the two men and several partners rich. Over the subsequent years, Paypal vets including Thiel, Elon Musk, and Reid Hoffman went on to found YouTube, Tesla, SpaceX, LinkedIn, Yelp, and Palantir.

2002年，eBay以15亿美元的价格收购了最终的初创公司Paypal，使这两个男人和几个合作伙伴变得富有。 在随后的几年中，包括Thiel，Elon Musk和Reid Hoffman在内的Paypal兽医继续创建YouTube，Tesla，SpaceX，LinkedIn，Yelp和Palantir。

Perhaps no phenomenon is more studied, marveled, and desired in the world of high tech and science than the mystery of serendipity. In seemingly every industry, CEOs pay millions in consulting, design, and architectural costs to multiply and optimize the number of chance encounters between their most creative employees — and hopefully profit from the blockbuster new products that might result. If only they could engineer the cubicles just so, or the indoor waterfall at the right angle, they might orchestrate providential encounters, or at least load the dice in their favor.

在高科技和科学世界中，也许没有比偶然性的奥秘更能研究，惊叹和期望的现象了。 在似乎每个行业中，CEO都会支付数百万美元的咨询，设计和建筑成本，以增加和优化其最具创造力的员工之间的机会，并希望从可能产生的巨大新产品中获利。 如果只有他们能如此设计小隔间，或者以正确的角度设计室内瀑布，他们可能会精心安排天意相遇，或者至少对他们有利。

No place on the planet generates more such interest than Silicon Valley. For decades, cities everywhere have tried to replicate the Valley’s record of producing one trend-setting tech giant after another, but none has quite measured up. Like history’s other hubs of outsized accomplishment — Athens in 450 B.C., Hangzhou in the 12th century, and Florence in the 16th century — Silicon Valley has entrenched itself as the world’s centrifugal force for the biggest thing of its age, tech.

在这个星球上，没有哪个地方比硅谷引起了更多这样的兴趣。 数十年来， 世界各地的城市都在试图复制硅谷创造一个引领潮流的科技巨头的记录，但没有一个能做到这一点。 就像历史上其他成就卓越的枢纽一样-公元前450年的雅典，12世纪的杭州和16世纪的佛罗伦萨-硅谷已将自己确立为世界上离心力，成为当时最大的技术力量。

But now Silicon Valley seems to be under a little-noticed threat. Amid Covid-19, the deep recession, and renewed antitrust pressure from Congress and regulators, the Valley faces a very different challenge — the disruption of its very essence, the serendipitous encounter. The culprit is a rush by many of the Valley’s leading companies to permanently lock in the coronavirus-led shift to remote work. In May, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey told his employees they were no longer required to turn up in the office. Slack said more or less the same to its workers, and the trend was made official by industry colossus Zuckerberg, who announced that he expected up to half his employees would become permanently remote.

但是现在，硅谷似乎受到了鲜为人知的威胁。 在Covid-19危机，严重的衰退以及国会和监管机构不断施加的反托拉斯压力下，硅谷面临着一个截然不同的挑战-破坏其本质，偶然的遭遇。 罪魁祸首是硅谷许多领先公司急于永久锁定冠状病毒主导的向远程工作的转变。 五月份，Twitter首席执行官杰克·多尔西(Jack Dorsey)告诉他的员工，他们不再需要到办公室里去。 Slack对其工人说或多或少都如此，这一趋势是由行业巨official扎克伯格宣布的。扎克伯格宣布，他希望多达一半的员工将永久偏远。

In Palo Alto, the median home now costs $3.2 million. In nearby Mountain View, it’s $1.7 million, and in San Francisco $1.8 million. In other words, the Valley has priced out almost anyone not making high six-figures, and even many of them.

在帕洛阿尔托(Palo Alto)，房屋中位价现在为320万美元。 在附近的山景城，是170万美元，在旧金山是180万美元。 换句话说，硅谷已经将几乎没有制造出高六位数的任何人都包括在内，甚至超过了六位数。

In the years before the pandemic, talent in San Francisco and the Valley were already conflicted about whether to stay, increasingly exasperated by the cost of living. The concentration of highly motivated creators has produced enticing jobs, but also driven up prices. In Palo Alto, the median home now costs $3.2 million. In nearby Mountain View, it’s $1.7 million, and in San Francisco $1.8 million. In other words, the Valley has priced out almost anyone not making high six-figures, and even many of them. The temptation has been to flee elsewhere, and some tech talent had already been doing so.

在大流行之前的几年里，旧金山和山谷的人才已经就是否应该留下来产生了冲突，生活成本使他们越来越恼火。 积极进取的创作者的聚集产生了诱人的工作，但同时也抬高了价格。 在帕洛阿尔托(Palo Alto)，房屋中位价现在为320万美元。 在附近的山景城，是170万美元，在旧金山是180万美元。 换句话说，硅谷已经将几乎没有制造出高六位数的任何人都包括在内，甚至超过了六位数。 诱惑一直是逃到别处，而且一些技术人才已经这样做了 。

But now, if engineers, designers, and venture capitalists are geographically disbanding, working via the cloud instead of walking Google’s halls, surfacing at Buck’s Restaurant, or the cafes on University Avenue, how will future serendipity happen?

但是现在，如果工程师，设计师和风险投资家在地域上解散，通过云工作，而不是走在Google的大厅，在Buck的餐厅或大学大道的咖啡馆铺面，那么未来的偶然性将如何发生？

To question the reality and role of serendipity to a Valleyite is to challenge feng shui in Hong Kong. Its mystic stature is both the Valley’s deepest-held belief and its drawing card. When Valleyites think of serendipity, they have in mind something unsought, found unexpectedly, and also proves to be highly lucrative.

质疑巧遇硅藻土的现实和作用，是对香港的风水提出挑战。 它的神秘身材既是硅谷最深厚的信念，又是其吸引人的卡片。 当硅谷人想到偶然性时，他们会想到一些意想不到的东西，这些东西出乎意料地发现了，而且事实证明，它们是非常有利可图的。

You might assert that, absent the partying Palo Alto summer, Facebook might have still grown into the form we know it, only in another place. You might also argue that serendipity is very rarely so dramatic, and more typically involves small instances of incremental providence as tech teams iterate. Perhaps, but Facebook did not bloom elsewhere. And while it’s true that serendipitous moments are usually prosaic and not Hollywood-worthy, you don’t need many lightning strikes when the outcomes are multibillion dollar tech companies. In every town, in every country in the world, childhood friends go into business together, but only rarely are those pals Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, growing up in the 1960s in the Silicon Valley town of Cupertino and going on to create Apple.

您可能会断言，缺席夏日派对的帕洛阿尔托(Palo Alto)，Facebook可能仍会成长为我们所知道的形式，只是在另一个地方。 您可能还会辩称，偶然性很少如此戏剧性，并且通常涉及随着技术团队不断迭代而产生的小小的增量天意。 也许吧，但是Facebook没有在其他地方开花。 固然偶然的时刻通常是平淡无奇的，而不是好莱坞值得的，但是当结果是价值数十亿美元的科技公司时，您不需要许多雷击。 在世界上每个国家的每个城镇中，童年时代的朋友都一起做生意，但史蒂夫·乔布斯和史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克的好朋友很少见，他们于1960年代在硅谷的库比蒂诺小镇长大，后来创立了苹果公司。

Tech serendipity is the means to an end in Silicon Valley. “You bring together a density of entrepreneurs and capital with a belief in crazy ideas and a readiness to fund them, and you manufacture serendipity at higher rates than if it were evenly distributed,” said Shaan Hathiramani, the CEO of Flockjay, a San Francisco education startup, who is among those wrestling with how to replicate the chance encounter.

科技的偶然性是终结硅谷的手段。 旧金山Flockjay首席执行官Shaan Hathiramani表示：“您聚集了密集的企业家和资本，并相信疯狂的想法并愿意为它们提供资金，而且制造意外事件的速度要比平均分配情况要高。”教育初创公司，他是那些努力复制机会遭遇的人。

But in a future remote dispersion of workers that all but excludes the unexpected, face-to-face encounter, what will Silicon Valley lose? And really, was it already lost long ago?

但是，在将来工人的远程分散工作中，几乎排除了意外的面对面的相遇时，硅谷将损失什么？ 真的，它早就已经丢失了吗？

If Silicon Valley has a father, it might be William Shockley, the paranoid co-inventor of the transistor. Shockley grew up in Palo Alto when it was a place of apricot orchards and a few thousand people, then went East for his doctorate and to work for Bell Labs. In the 1950s, after he, Walter Brattain, and John Bardeen sparked the information age revolution with their transistor, he wore out his welcome at Bell, and decided to go home. He took with him a dozen brilliant young engineers, and together they started the Valley’s first transistor-making firm. It didn’t turn out well for Shockley himself, because his best staff soon mutinied and left. But it did start the ball rolling for the Valley when some of his former employees went on to establish Intel. Already, serendipity was working.

如果硅谷有一个父亲，那可能是晶体管的共同幻想家威廉·肖克利(William Shockley)。 肖克利在帕洛阿尔托(Palo Alto)长大，那儿是一个杏果园和几千人的地方，然后到东方去攻读博士学位，并在贝尔实验室工作。 1950年代，在他，沃尔特·布拉顿(Walter Brattain)和约翰·巴丁(John Bardeen)用他们的晶体管引发了信息时代的革命之后，他在贝尔(Bell)表示了欢迎，并决定回家。 他带了十二位杰出的年轻工程师，他们共同创立了硅谷的第一家晶体管制造公司。 对于肖克利本人来说，结果并不好，因为他最好的员工很快就被叛变并离开了。 但是，当他的一些前雇员继续建立英特尔公司时，它的确为硅谷拉开了序幕。 偶然性已经起作用了。

By then, Palo Alto had become the beating heart of the Valley. A crucial action then rooted serendipity into the Valley’s firmament. In 1951, Fred Terman, Stanford’s dean of engineering, set aside hundreds of acres of land on university property as an industrial park for entrepreneurs. Inventors could lease space cheaply, locking in a relationship with the university and setting the stage for countless famous startups, including among the first tenants — Bill Hewlett and David Packard.

到那时，帕洛阿尔托已成为山谷的跳动心脏。 然后，关键行动将偶然性扎根于山谷的穹苍之中。 1951年，斯坦福大学工程学院院长弗雷德·特曼(Fred Terman)在大学财产中预留了数百英亩土地，作为企业家的工业园区。 发明家可以廉价地租用空间，与大学建立联系，并为无数著名初创公司(包括首批租户Bill Hewlett和David Packard)搭建舞台。

Dozens of startups and legacy companies are trying to solve the serendipity crisis. Among them are Gather, a Silicon Valley startup, and Hopin, a U.K. company, both of which see the answer in conference apps.

数十家初创公司和传统公司正在尝试解决偶然性危机。 其中有一家位于硅谷的初创公司Gather和一家英国公司Hopin，两者在会议应用程序中都能找到答案。

Until Covid-19, Big Tech seemed to be pulling out all the stops to engineer more serendipity. In recent years, Google had spent an estimated $120 million on celebrity architects, designers, and builders to construct the Googleplex, its Mountain View headquarters, and another $1 billion for an adjoining office park. Facebook had laid out $300 million to add a new main building at its headquarters for 3,000 employees, outfitted with its own Redwood forest, a 3.6 acre rooftop garden, and multiple restaurants. Apple had spent about $5 billion for Apple Park, a circular, four-story building designed by Jobs for its 13,000 local employees. In all the cases, the idea was to create more and more chances for people to run into each other and start trading ideas.

在Covid-19之前，Big Tech似乎全力以赴，以制造出更多的机缘巧合。 近年来，Google估计花费了1.2亿美元用于名人建筑师，设计师和建筑商，以建造Googleplex，Mountain View总部以及另外10亿美元用于毗邻的办公园区。 Facebook斥资3亿美元在其总部增添了一座新的主楼 ，可容纳3,000名员工，并配备了自己的红木森林，3.6英亩的屋顶花园和多家餐厅。 苹果已经斥资约50亿美元购买了苹果园，这是一座由乔布斯为其13,000名本地员工设计的圆形四层建筑。 在所有情况下，其想法都是为人们创造越来越多的机会，让他们互相碰碰并开始交易想法。

And yet Big Tech has seemed calm if not outright indifferent regarding the potential demise of the unscripted moment in this protracted period of remote work. A look at the last decade or so of Valley history may explain why: Over that time, the FAANG companies have largely stopped trying to invent the next big thing, at least in-house. Instead, they have shifted to milking their signature inventions — for Google, the search engine; for Facebook, its basic social platform; Microsoft’s operating system and Office software; and Apple’s suite of “i” products — while keeping a keen eye on the Valley’s garage inventors. When a startup produces something truly market-moving, Big Tech leaps into action, copying the breakthrough or attempting to buy the startup outright, such as Facebook’s acquisitions of WhatsApp and Instagram, and Google’s purchase of Fitbit and a suite of A.I. companies. Big Tech’s heft has allowed it to leverage away from a heavy reliance on serendipity.

然而，对于在这段漫长的远程工作中未记录的瞬间的潜在消亡，Big Tech似乎很平静，甚至不是完全漠不关心。 回顾Valley历史的过去十年左右，可以解释原因：在那段时间里，FAANG公司基本上已经停止尝试发明下一件大事，至少是在内部。 取而代之的是，他们转向挤占他们的标志性发明-对于搜索引擎Google而言； 适用于Facebook的基本社交平台； Microsoft的操作系统和Office软件； 和苹果的“ i”产品套件-同时密切关注硅谷的车库发明家。 当一家初创公司产生真正的市场动向时，Big Tech就会采取行动，复制突破或尝试直接收购该初创公司，例如Facebook收购WhatsApp和Instagram，以及Google收购Fitbit和一系列AI公司。 Big Tech的实力使其可以摆脱对偶然性的严重依赖。

If so, Big Tech’s presumed distance from the vagaries of chance could end up backfiring. The Valley’s scrappy startups, the small, currently nameless teams working long hours on an idea developed only on paper, do hope for a bit of kismet to stave off failure and, if the stars can possibly align, make them the next big thing. If the founders, engineers, and designers in such startups are laboring entirely or largely from their own homes, and miss their moment, doesn’t Big Tech potentially lose its next big growth machine?

如果是这样的话，Big Tech假定的机会与多变的机会相距甚远，最终可能会事与愿违。 硅谷草率的初创公司是目前尚无名字的小团队，他们长期致力于仅在纸上提出的想法，他们确实希望有一点基斯迈特能够避免失败，并且如果明星们能够团结一致，则使他们成为下一件大事。 如果此类初创公司的创始人，工程师和设计师全部或大部分在自己的家中工作，而错过了自己的时光，那么Big Tech难道不会失去下一个大型增长机器吗？

Entrepreneurs say that, at least currently, the answer is yes — the work-from-home mandate has probably put classic serendipity out of reach for Silicon Valley’s budding companies. “In the seed or angel stage of work, when you are trying to go from zero to one, you need rapid iteration,” said Hathiramani. “That is much harder to solve remotely.”

企业家们说，至少在目前，答案是肯定的-在家工作的要求可能使经典的偶然性对于硅谷的新兴公司来说遥不可及。 Hathiramani说：“在种子或天使工作阶段，当您尝试从零变到一时，您需要快速迭代。” “这很难远程解决。”

If serendipity’s explosive impact in creating the tech world as we know it has been biased in practice, a question is whether anyone should be vexed over its possible diminishment.

如果偶然性在创建我们所知道的技术世界时产生爆炸性影响，但实际上存在偏见，那么一个问题是，是否有人应该为它的衰落而烦恼。

Dozens of startups and legacy companies are trying to solve the serendipity crisis. Among them are Gather, a Silicon Valley startup, and Hopin, a U.K. company, both of which see the answer in conference apps: You watch online talks, then — just as you would at a physical conference — you go onto a “coffee break,” a virtual room where you can “bump into” just about anyone else at the event. You can also sign up to be paired with people with whom you might have similar interests. “It’s like a coffee break at TED,” said Paul Saffo, a futurist at Stanford.

数十家初创公司和传统公司正在尝试解决偶然性危机。 其中有一家位于硅谷的初创公司Gather和一家英国公司Hopin ，它们都在会议应用程序中看到了答案：您观看在线讲座，然后(就像在物理会议上一样)进入“咖啡休息时间”。 ”的虚拟房间，您可以在活动中与其他所有人“碰头”。 您还可以注册与可能有相似兴趣的人结对。 斯坦福大学的未来主义者保罗·萨福说：“这就像是在TED喝咖啡休息。”

Last week, Microsoft released a new feature for its Teams conferencing app called “Together Mode,” which uses A.I. to cut out the images of everyone in a call and assemble them in a virtual setting, such as a theater. The sensation is to remove some of the fake-togetherness of Zoom calls, which is a real advance for the typical work meeting. While all of these are valiant attempts, none introduce anything remotely organic. It’s the same digital intentionality, dressed in slightly fancier clothes: people sign up, know who is going to be present, and may or may not say or hear something surprising. In other words, if your objective is serendipity, all of it is utterly primitive.

上周，微软为其团队会议应用程序发布了一项名为“ Together Mode”的新功能，该功能使用AI裁剪通话中每个人的图像并将其组装在剧院等虚拟环境中。 感觉是要消除一些Zoom呼叫的伪造性，这对于典型的工作会议来说是真正的进步。 尽管所有这些都是英勇的尝试，但都没有引入任何遥不可及的东西。 这是同样的数字意图，穿着略显时髦的衣服：人们报名参加，知道将要出席的人，可能会也可能不会说或听到令人惊讶的消息。 换句话说，如果您的目标是偶然性，那么所有这些都是完全原始的。

Serendipity may be ripe for a reimagining anyway. That the most colorful and powerful examples of serendipity are a decade and a half or more old reveals a lot: in terms of Big Invention, Silicon Valley has been in a long slump. In papers and a seminal book, Robert Gordon, the economist at Northwestern University, argues that the United States’ golden century of invention ended about 1970, and that new products since then have been more or less meh. That is probably an excessively brutal assessment of U.S. invention, but Thiel himself famously groused, “We wanted flying cars. Instead we got 140 characters.” Silicon Valley is probably ripe for Serendipity 2.0 — something that looks different from today’s ecosystem.

小号 erendipity可能是成熟的reimagining反正。 关于偶然性的最丰富多彩，最有力的例子已经有十年半或更久了，这揭示了很多：就“大发明”而言，硅谷一直处于低迷状态。 西北大学(Northwestern University)的经济学家罗伯特·戈登(Robert Gordon)在论文和开创性著作中指出，美国的黄金发明世纪大约在1970年左右结束，从那时起，新产品或多或少地发展了。 这可能是对美国发明的过分残酷的评估，但泰尔本人著名地抱怨说 ：“我们想要飞行汽车。 相反，我们有140个字符。” 硅谷的Serendipity 2.0可能已经成熟，这与当今的生态系统有所不同。

One welcome change would be to address Silicon Valley’s dearth of diversity. In recent months and years, as calls for pay equality and greater opportunities for women, Black founders, and other minority professionals have moved to the center of public discussion, it has become increasingly clear that serendipity in the world’s tech paradise has mostly benefited only a select, privileged few. From 2000 to 2018, just 2.3% of venture capital funding went to Black founding teams. Last year, only 3% went to female teams, according to Crunchbase. If you were not white and male, you largely watched the action from the sidelines.

一个可喜的变化是解决硅谷缺乏多样性的问题。 在最近的几个月和几年中，随着人们要求薪酬平等以及为女性，黑人创始人和其他少数族裔专业人士提供更多机会的呼吁已成为公众讨论的焦点，越来越清楚的是，世界科技天堂的偶然性仅使选择，特权很少 。 从2000年到2018年， 只有2.3％的风险投资资金投向了Black创始团队。 根据Crunchbase的数据 ，去年，只有3％的女子队伍。 如果您不是白人和男性，则很大程度上是在观望旁观。

History’s creative hubs have been ephemeral — when Florence declined in the 16th century, it was not replaced by another concentration of artistic genius. The world simply went without.

历史的创意中心曾经是短暂的-当佛罗伦萨在16世纪衰落时，它并没有被艺术天才的另一个集中所取代。 世界简直没有了。

By its nature, serendipity means both being in the right place at the right time, and holding yourself open to an interaction. But entrepreneurs say that Silicon Valley tends to operate according to networks — people are generally receptive to chance encounters, if it’s with the people and demographics already in their personal and professional circles, but tend to be cooler toward those outside them. “So even in the best case, serendipitous interactions will heavily skew to match the tech population, which historically has been predominantly white/cis/male,” says Dan Pupius, the white co-founder of Range, a startup that makes software for engineering teams.

从本质上说，偶然性意味着既要在正确的时间在正确的地方，又要保持开放的态度进行互动。 但是企业家们说，硅谷倾向于按照网络运作-人们通常会接受偶然的机会，如果他们已经与个人和专业圈子中的人们和人口统计融为一体，但往往对周围的人比较冷淡。 “因此，即使在最佳情况下，偶然的互动也将严重偏向以匹配技术人群，而技术人群在历史上主要是白人/顺式/男性，” Rang的白人联合创始人Dan Pupius说，Rang是一家生产工程软件的初创公司。团队。

Venture capitalist David Hall, who is Black and a partner at Revolution, says that, in the case of Black and women entrepreneurs, serendipity is much harder to come by. Since minority founders are generally not hanging out with future VCs at college, been invited to their parties, or otherwise been part of their circle, connecting with the right people rarely happens organically. “When these ‘moments’ do occur they are likely the result of a lot of research and networking to find the investors with the most amount of domain overlap with the founders’ startup and/or the least amount of exhibited bias,” Hall says. “So that when the chance meeting occurs, it sparks of serendipity but has always had to be the result of much more work on the part of the women or minority founder.”

风险资本家戴维·霍尔(David Hall)是布莱克(Black)的合伙人，曾是Revolution的合伙人，他说，就黑人和女性企业家而言，偶然性要难得多。 由于少数族裔创始人通常不会在大学里与未来的风投公司闲逛，被邀请参加他们的聚会或以其他方式加入他们的圈子，因此与合适的人联系很少会自然而然地发生。 霍尔说：“当这些'时刻'发生时，它们很可能是大量研究和网络的结果，以发现与创始人的创业公司重叠的领域最多的投资者和/或表现出最少的偏见的投资者，” “因此，当机会聚会发生时，它会产生偶然性，但始终必须是妇女或少数派创始人更多工作的结果。”

If serendipity’s explosive impact in creating the tech world as we know it has been biased in practice, a question is whether anyone should be vexed over its possible diminishment. A better, rejuvenated system would arguably be open to any winner.

如果偶然性在创建我们所知道的技术世界时产生爆炸性影响，但实际上存在偏见，那么一个问题是，是否有人应该为它的衰落而烦恼。 可以说，更好，更年轻的系统将对任何赢家开放。

No one knows exactly what such a new system might look like. And there is a risk if we don’t get it right. History’s creative hubs have been ephemeral — when Florence declined in the 16th century, it was not replaced by another concentration of artistic genius. The world simply went without. Granted, Florence didn’t have Zoom or the cloud, but so far both of those have fallen short in the present crisis. If a demise of serendipity leads to Silicon Valley’s decline, the world is unlikely to get an equal substitute. We may simply lose our engine of technological advancement.

没有人确切知道这种新系统会是什么样。 如果我们做错了，就有风险。 历史的创意中心曾经是短暂的-当佛罗伦萨在16世纪衰落时，它并没有被艺术天才的另一个集中所取代。 世界简直没有了。 诚然，佛罗伦萨没有Zoom或Cloud，但是到目前为止，这两个指标在当前危机中均未实现。 如果巧合的消亡导致硅谷的衰落，世界不太可能获得平等的替代品。 我们可能只是失去了技术进步的动力。

We’ve managed to answer other seemingly insurmountable challenges to serendipity. Lori McCay-Peet, a scholar of serendipity at Dalhousie University in Halifax, said that when public libraries began to go digital in the 1990s, people worried deeply. How would they serendipitously discover a book on a subject they never considered in an intentional environment like a computer? At first, their fears were borne out in uninspired library search software. But, after years of tinkering, McCay-Pett said, today’s digital libraries are deeply serendipitous. Traditionalists still head for the stacks, but younger generations argue that better search engines present them with dizzying numbers of unexpected books, articles, and papers.

我们已经设法应对了其他似乎无法克服的挑战。 哈利法克斯(Halifax)达尔豪西大学(Dalhousie University)的巧合学者Lori McCay-Peet说，当1990年代公共图书馆开始数字化时，人们深感担忧。 他们将如何偶然地发现一本关于计算机等故意环境中从未考虑过的主题的书？ 最初，他们的恐惧在没有灵感的图书馆搜索软件中得到了证明。 但是，麦凯-皮特说，经过多年的修补，如今的数字图书馆非常偶然。 传统主义者仍然在争夺市场，但是年轻一代认为，更好的搜索引擎会为他们提供令人眼花zz乱的意外书籍，文章和论文。

If the past is instructive, the pandemic will pass and many daily routines will return. Hordes of people will return to the office, but large numbers won’t. Some will pick up and move. At that point, today’s effort to digitalize serendipity will pick up more urgency. Video conferencing and other software will get better, and some companies will claim their product fosters the unscripted moment in truly innovative ways, blind to demographics. The question is whether that solution will include a continued place for Silicon Valley.

如果过去是有益的，那么大流行将过去，许多日常活动将返回。 成群的人将返回办公室，但大量人不会。 一些会捡起并移动。 到那时，当今将意外事件数字化的努力将变得更加紧迫。 视频会议和其他软件将变得更好，并且一些公司将声称他们的产品以真正的创新方式培育了不受脚本约束的时刻，而这是人口统计所不具备的。 问题在于该解决方案是否将继续保留硅谷。