Washington is top-down, centralized, "a series of fiefdoms," Kralik says. "Washington operates on the Peter Principle. You get promoted to the highest level of your own incompetence."

Silicon Valley is a bottom-up, "somewhat chaotic," decentralized network that thrives "on meritocracy," he continues. Twenty-somethings with an idea -- say, Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page -- think their way to the top.

But in reality, the two worlds can't operate separately. In response to a spate of lawsuits against tech firms in the mid-1990s, Valley CEOs formed TechNet, a bipartisan network that lobbies in Washington. And by the time the Microsoft antitrust case made headlines in the late '90s, it was clear that the Valley needed to beef up its presence in Washington.

Says Peter Leyden, the former editor of Wired magazine who heads the New Politics Institute, a think tank focusing on technology's impact on Washington: "There's an emerging sense that both worlds need each other. Think of it this way: The scale of the problems that the world faces -- globalization, global warming, global terrorism -- can't be solved without these two hubs cooperating with each other."