Artifacts

Description:

"Silicon Valley, a small place with few identifiable geologic or geographic features, has achieved a mythical reputation in a very short time. The modern material culture of the Valley may be driven by technology, but it also encompasses architecture, transportation, food, clothing, entertainment, intercultural exchanges, and rituals.". "Combining a reporter's instinct for a good interview with traditional archaeological training, Christine Finn brings the perspectives of the past and the future to the story of Silicon Valley's present material culture. She traveled the area in 2000, a period when people's fortunes could change overnight. She describes a computer's rapid trajectory from useful tool to machine to be junked to collector's item. She explores the sense that whatever one has is instantly superseded by the next new thing - and the effect this has on economic and social values. She tells stories of a place where fruit-pickers now recycle silicon chips and where more money can be made babysitting for post-IPO couples than working in a factory. The ways that people are working and adapting, are becoming wealthy or barely getting by, reveal themselves in the cultural landscape of the fifteen cities that make up the area known as Silicon Valley."--BOOK JACKET.

subjects: Archaeologists,  Biography,  Civilization,  Computers,  Description and travel,  Material culture,  Social aspects of Computers,  Social aspects of Technological innovations,  Social life and customs,  Technological innovations,  Technology and civilization,  Travel,  State & Local,  Software-industrie,  Manners and customs,  HISTORY,  Social aspects,  General,  Leefwijze,  Culturele aspecten,  Santa clara county (calif.),  Technological innovations, united states,  Computers, social aspects,  California, description and travel,  California, social life and customs,  Archaeologists, biography,  Technology, social aspects,  Journeys

People: Christine Finn

Places: California,  Santa Clara Valley (Santa Clara County),  Santa Clara Valley (Santa Clara County, Calif.)

Times: 20th century