A thin paperback small enough to fit into my back pocket, it explores the link between Silicon Valley and the American counter culture of the 1960s and 70s, including so many hippie attitudes lifted from Buddhism. As we walk through Facebook's rooftop park, he hands me a copy of a 1986 academic monograph called From Satori to Silicon Valley. And that means he's part of a long tradition inside Northern California tech circles. He's also a Zen priest who studied with the same Buddhist monk as Steve Jobs. That means he analyzes the massive of amounts of online data generated by News Feed, looking for ways to improve the service and other parts of Facebook. Zigmond works in the building below, overseeing data analytics for the Facebook News Feed and other parts of the world's most popular social network. After all, we're on the roof of the newest Facebook building, a Frank Gehry creation called MPK20, right next to Highway 84, the Dumbarton Bridge, and the sprawling urban marshlands of Menlo Park, California, where the bog is decorated with so many power lines, transmission towers, and electrical substations. Beyond the nine acres, all we can see are more trees, more green, and the mountains in the east, so the park seems almost endless. It's a big park-stretching across a good nine acres of grass, mulch, shrubs, and gravel paths-but from where we are, it looks much bigger. The sun is high, and the trees give little shade. As we walk, Dan Zigmond pulls on a black baseball cap.
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