CONCEPT
The Myth of the Garage
The founding fiction of Silicon Valley — that innovation originates in private initiative and individual genius — whose ideological function is to conceal the publicly funded foundation on which private commercial success rests.
The myth of the garage refers to the iconic narrative of technology entrepreneurship: two young innovators in a suburban workshop, a workbench, a soldering iron, and an idea that changes the world. The Apple origin story in a Los Altos garage is the paradigmatic instance, now a protected historic site. The myth is not factually false — work did happen in the garage — but it performs an ideological function that Mazzucato's framework identifies with prosecutorial specificity. The garage story locates innovation in private initiative and individual genius, rendering invisible the aquifer of public investment on which the garage depends: the semiconductor industry sustained by military procurement, the computer science knowledge produced in NSF-funded university labs, the internet built by DARPA, the public education system that trained the engineers. The myth is maintained not conspiratorially but structurally — by earnings calls, venture capital pitches, and business school case studies that celebrate private vision while omitting the public foundation.
