Description
Book SynopsisSince the initial publication of Cultures@SiliconValley fourteen years ago, much has changed in Silicon Valley. The corporate landscape of the Valley has shifted, with tech giants like Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter vying for space with a halo of applications that connect people for work, play, romance, and education. Contingent labor has been catalyzed by ubiquitous access to the Internet on smartphones, enabling ride-sharing services like Uber and Lyft and space-sharing apps like Airbnb. Entrepreneurs compete for people's attention and screen time.
Alongside these changes, daily life for all but the highest echelon has been altered by new perceptions of scarcity, risk, and shortage. Established workers and those new to the workforce try to adjust. The second edition of Cultures@SiliconValley brings the story of technological saturation and global cultural diversity in this renowned hub of digital innovation up to the present. In this fully updated edition, J. A. English-Lueck provides readers with a host of new ethnographic stories, documenting the latest expansions of Silicon Valley to San Francisco and beyond. The book explores how changes in technology, especially as mobile phones make the Internet accessible everywhere, impact work, family, and community life. The inhabitants of Silicon Valley illustrate in microcosm the social and cultural identity of the future.
Trade Review"Many imagine Silicon Valley as a kind high-tech Oz, watched over by wizards of code. But thanks to more than twenty years of on-the-ground exploration, Jan English-Lueck can show us the Valley as it really is: risky, diverse, cosmopolitan and complex. This is simply the best study of Silicon Valley's many cultures that I know." -- Fred Turner * Stanford University *
"In her newly updated book, Jan English-Lueck takes a deep dive into Silicon Valley, where hackers, engineers, entrepreneurs, temporary workers, educators, janitors, and many more drive the creation of technologies that pervade our lives. Her sharp and lively account is simply indispensable for anyone who wants to understand how technology shapes those living in Silicon Valley and the broader consequences." -- Gabriella Coleman * author of
Hacker, Hoaxer, Whistleblower, Spy: The Many Faces of Anonymous *
Table of ContentsContents and Abstracts1Culture Version 2.x: An Amplified Community chapter abstract
This chapter gives an overview of the development and impact of Silicon Valley. Work and workplaces, long a factor in regional civic life, have solidified their position. Large iconic organizations, such as Apple and Google, set the stage for worker expectations, even in small start-ups. Industries such as clean technology and the Internet of Things go beyond the realm of communication revealing the role of information technologies in the world around us. These new industries are part of the story of Silicon Valley's expansion. The region itself has outgrown its original boundaries, extending beyond Santa Clara County into the rest of the Bay Area. This chapter provides a guide to the rest of the book, and sets up the twin stories of technological saturation and complex global diversity.
2Compressing: Using Digital Devices to Reshape Space and Time chapter abstract
This chapter discusses how ubiquitous computing has remolded work patterns and family connections. As technologies emerged and economic landscape changed, workers faced new opportunities for augmentation, and new obligations to produce. Mobile access to the Internet, cloud computing, and social networking intensified the domination of work in life. Designers, increasingly important players in the workscape, think through ways to hook devices and services to amplified users. High visibility companies such as Google and Facebook actively rethink worker productivity and worker roles. Organized labor has a muted impact, while microwork, the "gig economy," and contract work continue to redefine the relationship of workers to companies, and the relative status of workers. These changes have an impact on the lives of the workers, their families, and their communities. The use of mobile computing changed everyday life and, above all, the compression of time and space. Ethnographic stories illustrate these concepts.
3Networking: Building Community in Silicon Valley chapter abstract
This chapter includes discussions of how commercial and non-profit social networking platforms have changed social interactions. Facebook links weak ties, and amplifies distinctions between experienced communities. Services, augmented by technology, change how we build and think about our social institutions. Clean technology and financial technology illustrate this linkage of social and engineering endeavors. Human-centered design often augments the impact of such services. Design itself has become a metaphor for intentional change that influences civic discourse. Socially-infused industries, such as clean technology, meld together social aspirations and opportunities for venture capitalism. Civic engineering, intentionally redesigning Silicon Valley public life as a demonstration of social innovation, has given rise to enduring public-private partnerships that have reshaped Silicon Valley's public culture.
4Input/Output: Catalyzing Global Cultures chapter abstract
No longer is Silicon Valley an emergent globalizing phenomenon, it is a premiere planetary hub whose global economic ties have become iconic. Large companies can harness a global workforce, and small startups reach across international boundaries. More than a third of the population is foreign-born, and everyday experiences are necessarily multicultural. This chapter deepens the discussion of deep diversity, of living in a complex plural society. The stories in the chapter go beyond a focus on the immigrant experience to explore what is celebrated, accepted, tolerated and excluded as cultures meet and intermingle. The region, however, is not a multicultural utopia. Class remains a dominant divisive element in this experiment in multicultural living. Inequality reaches into civic and work life revealing potential vulnerabilities in the body politic.
5Channeling: Culture at Work and Home chapter abstract
The deep diversity experienced across the range of the lower to upper middle classes does not mask the deep exclusion of the marginalized. Examples of how deep diversity enters daily life through care, food, and home life humanize this complex concept. Stories of care giving highlight what matters to people, teasing out the challenge of juggling omnipresent work and intimate home life. Similarly, stories of cultural instrumentality underscore the rules of Silicon Valley culture, which are so deeply pragmatic. Silicon Valley residents and workers struggle with "cultural agility" as a tool for navigating the diverse demands of culture, work, time and family.
6Bandwidth Control: Creating Useful Culture chapter abstract
Silicon Valley balances social experimentation with the old familiar story of inequality driven by capitalism. The etiquette of pragmatism, discussed in this chapter, is a tool for sifting out social behaviors that do not lead to a desirable future. Design, gamification, and venture philanthropy offer a novel way of approaching the region's social issues, but can they change the fundamental dynamics of inequality and lead to a more sustainable region? The experiment in the pragmatic merger of civic life and entrepreneurial endeavor continues. Some consequences of this merger are perilous, and others enticing. Silicon Valley remains a test case for 21st century life, and the effects of the various experimental cultural attitudes and actions of this region bear examination and reflection.
