Notice how massive growth of companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft, and Amazon over the past 5 years. Additionally notice how many of the big VC's of today were early investors in companies such as FB. This gave them the capital and trust they needed to invest in all these random startups.
I bet that an Uber IPO will give VCs the money they need in order to continue to invest in more and more companies. The success of silicon valley is that every 8-10 years, there is a new company that reaches unprecedented valuations, and in turn people reinvest that money into the next generation of companies who will reach those same levels.
There probably is. And now what? Don't go scouting all the garages in Da Valley just-yet, as basements/coffee shops/coworking spaces/campus dorms are The New Garage 2.0.
Before 2001-2003 was 1991-1993, which (aside from the recession) featured intense investor interest in VR, tablet/pen computing, WebTV, etc. That period of uncertainty ended with Netscape's introduction and the rise of the WWW.
There was a mini-shift around 1985-86, with the introduction of Windows and Steve Jobs's ouster from Apple. That changed the paradigm of desktop apps from 8-bit PC apps hand-coded in assembly to more slick GUI apps written in C or Pascal that used OS frameworks. Like the other cycles, it was also accompanied by a lot of hype and malinvestment, but largely in the B2B world: the big buzzwords in 85/86 were AI, 4GLs, and 3D computer graphics.
Finally, the PC revolution started in the mid 70s. This also had a similar period of uncertainty, coupled with a recession - take a look at old magazines from the late 60s and early 70s. But instead of computing, the hot technology areas then were flying cars, supersonic transports, and home appliances. Makes me wonder if the next big thing might be something not computer related at all, perhaps aviation (again), rocketry, or material science.