An Idea Whose Time Has Come and Gone and Come
By John C. Dvorak

All that’s missing from the hi-tech scene is creative exploitation. Exploitation the way they used to do it in the old days — with a company town.

Some people are already beginning to think in these terms. One company is planning a hi-tech community in Japan. This is to be a pre-planned silicon valley replete with malls, fancy transportation, a big airport and everything you’d supposedly want. Instead of a one-company town, though, this thing would be a valley of companies. This will never work as well as the one company town. The one company town can really put the screws to the hapless employees. Lock them in. Force them to be happy.

Historically company towns have a bad reputation. Some years ago, when Steve Jobs was still with Apple, he advocated something called Apple-town or Appleland — a company town to be built near Gilroy or in some other dusty agricultural site where land was cheap and there was plenty of room to expand. When this concept was first mentioned I ridiculed it, but now I’m beginning to think that a few screwball company towns might be a great remedy to declining American productivity. If nothing else they make for interesting sociology.

The industrial revolution bred the company town as it bred large corporations and the two grew up together. The technology revolution has not continued this tradition. IBM has bred a few ersatz company towns in upstate New York and around the country. But IBM doesn’t own the housing. Route 128 in Massachusetts and Silicon Valley have naturally evolved in a new style: areas of concentrated singular hi-tech activity. But there is no real company town where a company (or even a group of companies) actually owns the town. The closest you get is Apple Computer in Cupertino. But why doesn’t a big company do like they used to do make a town from scratch or buy one. Heck, even Kim Basinger bought a town in Georgia. Why can’t Microsoft or Dell Computers do the same?

A town owned by, say, Compaq, could build fancy homes for its employees and keep them inexpensive. It would own the police department so nobody important would get in trouble. It could make sure that people exercised properly and ate healthy food. It would own the cable company and could show training films on one channel and reruns of the board of directors meeting on another channel. Of course the normal fare would be available too (without the annoying IBM commercials). The company would have its own school system and train the employees of the future with special classes. It would be one heck of a community. There’s be no crime. Utopian. Some companies in Silicon Valley have the rudiments of this idea with on-site gyms and restaurants and special facilities designed to keep employees at the office longer. Many even call their sites “campuses.” But unlike a campus there is no housing, no campus police, no student council. The University model is a good one for corporations to adopt in the form of a company town. “Look, see, just like college. No big deal.”

With hi-tech companies growing massive, monstrous even, there is pressure to find good employees who work cheap and stay put. The attractive security provided by the benefits of a company-controlled life have always worked in the past to achieve these goals. We can expect them to be used again.

The downside is that this concept will always evolve into the form of a slave labor camp. In the beginning only utopian idealism clouds reality. Soon the evil bean-counters come in and see potential profit points surrounding a captive audience. Soon the cheap housing and inexpensive services become “competitive.” New corporate directors arrive and they lack the vision of the founders and pretty soon demands are made on the hapless employees. Within no time the company town is a shambles. The businesses in a company town (if they are not ALL owned by the ruling company) are so intertwined that once the main company rethinks its role everything comes to a screeching halt. Within a few years the company town turns into a funky half dead burg with interesting old buildings and the pallor of a ghost town. If the town doesn’t just go to pot it becomes a curiosity, perhaps a tourist trap. These dead company towns are all over the country. There are half a dozen in the vicinity of the San Francisco Bay Area: Crockett and Port Costa come to mind. There are countless in New England. The Midwest is spotted with them: Austin, Minnesota; Topeka, Kansas. Watching this process is both entertaining and educational. Promises of lifetime employment and job security are broken overnight by the large corporations who eventually determine that they aren’t really very good at being governments after all.

Pretty soon the whole notion of a company town is discredited. They eventually fade from view as a viable concept until some writer brings up the idea and some utopian ego-driven CEO figures he or she can do it right — this time, for sure. Whatever company tries it will make a tough competitor for those early years when a company town pays off in profits. You can be sure somebody will try it. I’ll be watching.

(Article Originally appeared in PC/Computing 1992.)