BOOK
$25
Digging deep in a boomtown
It is hardly a new thing for journalists to write about Silicon Valley. If the writer is also an Oxford archaeologist, however, then we dare hope for some fresh insights. That is what Christine Finn delivers in Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley.
Finn's surface collections range from random encounters with strangers on public transportation to the objects of daily life that surround us. Painstakingly, she goes through the stratigraphy of Silicon Valley in the year 2000 - home to cherry orchards, PCs, and finally, the dotcom boom and bust. Her exploratory test pits sample bits of life - how people find love, do their work, or post notices on a Woodside, California, bulletin board. She delves into the lives of hunters and gatherers who fill garages with ancient Apple computers. She traces the patterns of exchange - of people and things - so integral to the multicultural workplace of Silicon Valley.
Puzzling over the natural history of individual artifacts, she describes the gold wires gleaned from dead PCs looking like "a hoard from a Near Eastern tomb,"destined to "return to their technological context."
Underlying the whole assemblage of essays is an enthusiasm, a romanticism, that comes with seeing Silicon Valley not as a perfect place, but a place that gave birth to a distinct lifestyle whose impact goes well beyond its borders.
The MIT Press: mitpress.mit.edu.
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