Tiny Logo for Comm 149 Dr. Andrew Wood
Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378
Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu
Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda

Summary of English-Lueck

The Work, Identity, and Community in Silicon Valley Project, developed by the San Jose State University Anthropology Department, seeks to develop a sense of how Silicon Valley is shaped and understood by its residents - many of whom are not engineers and computer scientists, but contribute to the continuing articulation and re-articulation of the "valley." In her essay, Defining a Silicon Valley Worldview: A Retrospective on Tomorrow Land, Jan English-Lueck (1996) addresses the construction of Silicon Valley around metaphors that evoke a particularly strict work ethic. In a manner similar to the thesis advanced by Langdon Winner, respondents to English-Lueck's research report that Silicon Valley culture has witnessed an explosion in wealth, but a reduction in the quality of life. Two of the most compelling themes in English-Lueck's essay concern the role of technology as a key to both efficiency and social cohesion to Silicon Valley life.

Technology creates efficiency

How does one ensure the smooth integration of home and work, individuality and community, in public life? This question circulates through much of our course. Much of English-Lueck's research indicates that technology serves to blur these apparently contradictory components of public life. English-Lueck quotes a respondent in her research:

How does this occur? One might recall previous conversations about the machine and the garden in which the power to influence human behaviors is hidden beneath subtle environments that seemingly privilege human will. Like the classic Star Trek episode, "Shore Leave," technological means of surveillance and control reside just under the surface of public life and amusement. However, according to many residents of Silicon Valley, even these metaphors are blurred, so that the machine is the garden. Orchards and farmland are rapidly replaced by "campuses" and "office parks." The turn-of-the-century light tower that once straddled Market Street in downtown San Jose [illustrated by the postcard above] would be an anachronism today not because technology has lost its ability to amaze - but because we so thoroughly live in a maze of technology.

Technology integrates relationships

Many respondents to English-Lueck's research also argue that technology - more than city halls or public squares, offers cohesion to contemporary public life:

The question remains: is this a good thing? Langdon Winner warns of the power of ubiquitous technology to create an electronic panopticon, an "all-seeing-place" in which individuals are continually surveyed:

Naturally, many residents and observers of Silicon Valley may disagree. It is possible that computer-mediated relationships create the potential to construct networks of like-minded individuals and groups without the limitations of geography and, with the aid of sophisticated software, even language. Howard Rheingold (1999) proposes that internet communication may indeed enhance the potential for democratic public life. Responding both to recent studies that correlate frequent internet use to social isolation and to Robert Putnam's (1995) influential study of the decline in civic engagement in U.S. society over the past 35 years, Rheingold emphasizes the role of personal and community responsibility in crafting democratic spaces online:

Exploring the role of technology in Silicon Valley - as a tool of efficiency and relationship-building - reveals a fascinating convergence in public life, at least in high-tech communities. Social forces that appear elsewhere to be opposed to one another - leisure and labor, individuality and community - seem to blur in the former "Valley of the Heart's Delight." Shall Silicon Valley continue to pace younger communities seeking high-tech wealth and prosperity? Or, in dystopian contrast, shall it fall prey to warnings made by Joel Garreau and Mike Davis - that public life cannot flourish without physical sites of diversity and democracy?

References

English-Lueck J.A., (1996). Defining a Silicon Valley worldview: A retrospective on tomorrow land. Available online: http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/anthropology/svcp/EnglishP.htm.
 
Putnam, R.D. (1995). Bowling alone: America's declining social capital. Journal of Democracy, 6(1), pp. 65-78.
 
Rheingold, H. (1999). Misunderstanding new media. Feed. Available online: http://www.feedmag.com/essay/es102lofi.html.
 
Winner, L. (1999/1991). Silicon Valley mystery house. In M. Sorkin's (ed), Variation on a theme park: The new American city and the end of public space (pp. 31-60). New York: Hill and Wang.

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