This struck a chord with me. I grew up in rural Scotland, learning to program my MSX and the BBC Micros they had in our school. I picked up a lot of 'tech culture' from Byte magazine, which would sporadically appear in our local newsagent. Although I have been to the US a few times now, I've only been to the valley once, but walking through Palo Alto listening to everyone around talking tech I had the strangest feeling that in some way I felt 'at home'.