Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley

By Christine A. Finn

Book Overview

An archaeologist explores the material culture of Silicon Valley.

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 She explores the sense that whatever one has is instantly superseded by the next new thing--and the effect this has on economic and social values.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 from 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, are visible in the cultural landscape of the fifteen cities that make up the area called "Silicon Valley."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0262561549
• ISBN13: 9780262561549
• Release Date: September 2002
• Publisher: Mit Press
• Length: 288 Pages
• Weight: 0.85 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.4" x 8.1"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

A different view of the valley, removed from the hype

This book takes a look at the other side of the Silicon Valley: the side removed from the glitz and glamour of the Silicon Valley (or at least what it had during the writing of the book).Other reviewers wanted more coverage of local companies. For that, they should turn to the dozens of business publications that already cover that information, or the dozens of books that chronicle the history of the Valley and its various star companies.This book was written to help outsiders understand the reality of the Silicon Valley and, having been written from the perspective of an outsider, finds significant details that insiders either simply take for granted or just don't notice.It describes the social foundations upon which the Silicon Valley was built and upon which it currently rests, and uses that information to try to explain how the Valley of Hearts Delight was tranformed. In this regard, the book truly is an archaeological treatise, but written in a friendly and readable style that allows the reader to experience the scene firsthand.

An Oxford Scholar In The Clean Room

So you think you've heard it all when it comes to the Valley, right? Well check this one out. With a fresh view and a scientist's eye, Christine Finn gives us new insight into a subject that has been done before. Frankly, I was sceptical, but I also had a minimum of six hours to wait at SFO (due to fog there and snow in Chicago). The author covers the valley like nobody I have ever read. Underlying a roaming set of essays is an almost palpable enthusiasm. And there is a romantic slant (in the classic sense) - she sees the valley as what it is as well as what it means to society. I recommend it.