The word 'silicon' is correct and usable in written English.
You can use it when referring to a chemical element with the symbol Si and atomic number 14, which is a metalloid used in the manufacture of semiconductor devices. For example: "Silicon is used in the production of transistors and other semiconductor devices."
Andreessen Horowitz, the US venture capital firm that backed Facebook and Twitter, has invested $20m £13mm) in a startup creating virtual reality from London's "silicon roundabout" area.
Talk of curing cancer sounds great, but so would have been talk of creating the "next silicon valley" or becoming the leading nation in sustainable energy technology.
It was Intel co-founder Gordon Moore who, back in 1965, first noticed that the number of transistors capable of being crammed on a sliver of silicon was doubling every two years.
Older and wiser, researchers have turned to building hybrid chips that are fabricated, layer by layer, using conventional silicon epitaxy for everything except the final graphene transistor channels on the top of the device.
Since their inception, integrated circuits have had a two-dimensional planar structure, with a metal gate mounted across a flat conducting channel of silicon.
To get around this performance roadblock, Intel's new transistor design features a conducting channel in the form of a vertical silicon fence that stands proud of the surface.
But the one graphene application that could turn the whole of electronics on its head a replacement for silicon-based semiconductors remains tantalisingly over the horizon.
Meanwhile, a £1bn bid by the Wellcome Trust to buy the Olympic Park and village and create a "Silicon Valley for Europe" – in conjunction with two universities, and providing a museum, social housing and 7,000 jobs – was turned down by the Olympic Park Legacy Company.
"Silicon Valley is only an hour away, so a lot of that hacker culture winds up in Sacramento, because it's cheaper to live there, and you can commute back and forth," Bannon says of the attraction of the darknet for the city's musicians.
He first joined Twitter on a visit to the company's headquarters in Silicon Valley in 2010.
It was significant also that on the day that Jobs revealed this insight to the world, standing next to him on the stage was John Doerr, one of Silicon Valley's smartest investors, who was there to announce the setting up of a $100m investment fund for app developers.
