A piece of tin can speak, I don't know, about seven words.

And it turns out, that's plenty.

From American public media, this is Marketplace Tech.

I'm Lily Dramale. Well, I'm looking at the gorgeous San Francisco skyline and guess what? I'm stuck in some of the worst traffic in the country.

And as well, I'd rather not be here.

I will say, you know, there's a fair amount to look at on this drive. This stretch of highway is

blanketed with billboards and they're pretty much all for tech companies. So

there's the classic Apple one which shows how great the

pictures are if you buy the latest iPhone. This one's of a cute kid sticking his

tongue out and there's one up ahead that says exit strategy. It's for Airbnb.

And for people who make this drive every day, sometimes for years on end,

these billboards are and have for a long time

long time been a way to take the temperature here in San Francisco

and Silicon Valley.

In Silicon Valley, which tends to be focused very much on tech right now, there is a big highway called 101.

That's Chernaz-Davar, operating partner and chief marketing officer at Coisla Ventures.

That goes about 25 miles north to south and south would be kind of where

the semiconductor companies are and north would be all the way up to San Francisco and that's the

freeway that actually has a lot of

billboards. Well so what makes the the billboards here in Silicon Valley and in

San Francisco unique compared to other places?

So I would say the billboards in Silicon Valley actually almost reflect the technology and

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