A second characteristic of successful people today, especially evident in the high-tech world, is that they come from diverse ethnic backgrounds. At companies like America Online and Microsoft, there are now caucus groups and cafeteria sections not for Asian Indians but specifically for Gujaratis, Bengalis, and Keralites. Each group speaks a different native language and savors a different cuisine. Economist Gary Becker, a Nobel laureate, reports that more than a third of the 1 million people employed in Silicon Valley are foreign-born. True, African Americans make up a tiny percentage of senior personnel in the computer and telecommunications industries, but that is because blacks earn less than 2 percent of Ph.D. s in fields like engineering, physics, mathematics, and computer science.
Social networks are as much a reality in high-tech fields as in other fields.
Still, what is striking is how successfully nonwhite immigrant groups have established networks of their own. For example, Indian entrepreneurs have set up their own curry network, complete with regular deal-generating powwows, an annual conference, a magazine, and a website. It is certainly true that not everyone uses the Internet equally. Whites and Asian Americans are more likely than blacks and Hispanics to log on, and the affluent are far more wired than the indigent. After all, Internet access today seems about as serious a problem in the United States as telephone access or automobile access.