Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley [Hardcover]

Christine A. Finn (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2001

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 She explores the sense that whatever one has is instantly superseded by the next new thing -- and the effect this has on economic and social values.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."

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Observing the dot-com boom and bust was like watching time-lapse photography; it seemed unreal, unsettling, yet deeply compelling. How can we try to understand the cultural changes wreaked by the last "new economy" of the 20th century? Oxford scholar Christine A. Finn spent 2000 in San Jose and its surrounding valley, exploring the personal and material culture of the area. Her outsider's report, Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley, is a great start for students of the accelerating rate of social change.

Though she's no techie herself, she has an uncanny knack for meeting the right people at the right time to get the information she needs to drive her story onward. Talking with successes and failures, pre-IPO orchard workers turned uncertain service industry workers, and unashamed old-tech geeks, she finds a wealth of passion and confusion as social upheaval threatens to make the area's daily earthquakes nothing more than a convenient bundle of metaphors.

Finn is blessed with the ability and willingness to admit her own bafflement--when the goings-on get too weird for her to explain, she just shrugs her shoulders and moves on, leaving explanations to later theorists. Written just as the bust was recognized as more than a temporary setback, Artifacts could have been an epitaph or a morality play; instead, Finn guides the reader to a broader understanding of human motivation and behavior amidst trying times. --Rob Lightner

From Booklist

Finn, a British journalist and archaeologist with no background in technology, provides fresh insights on the impact of high technology on American culture. She interviewed a cross section of citizens of Silicon Valley from twentysomething e-commerce executives to bus drivers and farmworkers. Finn takes an archaeologist's view of the valley, its artifacts, trading areas (spas, salons, and shops), art and architecture, and habitats. She views the geographic landscape of an area prone to earthquakes as another sign that the region is "in a constant state of flux." Among her interview subjects are collectors of outdated technology who have computers with old software programs that have been resurrected, "like the Rosetta Stone being deciphered." The modern culture of Silicon Valley is driven by technology and change at a rate so rapid that local historians are now desperate to record the past and present before they are lost. Techies and technophobes alike will enjoy this book. Vanessa Bush
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: The MIT Press; First Edition edition (November 1, 2001)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0262062240
• ISBN-13: 978-0262062244
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,523,295 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Silicon Valley extended?, March 20, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (Hardcover)

I was looking forward to reading this book with the intention of collecting facts, both historical and computer oriented, in regards to the Silicon Valley. However, it was a wee bit like reading a large essay of sorts, and I was distracted by bouncing dates and events not in a specific order, and material that had little or nothing to do with Silicon Valley. Where were the interviews with the large computer companies and internet companies and their CEO's? When I visited the Silicon Valley, I saw several computer companies in Mountain View, Milpitas, Oakland, Redwood City, Alviso, Fremont, Sunnyvale and San Jose that were never addressed. These companies have fed our nation with a wealth of technology and financial stability amongst the world. Instead, there are pages of personal experiences that had no place in an archaeology based text. If you are to read this book, Artifacts, be sure to have a pad of paper to map out chronologically what is going on. Also, I would have liked to have seen actual "artifacts" of Silicion Valley photographed large and in color, with a description and history beneath them as to identify and associate them. I suppose this book would have fancied me if it wasn't suppose to be an archaeology text. Also, I would have liked to read about the cities in Silicon Valley that are crucial to the computer field and their "artifacts". Some of the cities reported on are not considered the "computer" cities of the Silicon Valley. It may have been that the author was side tracked by her personal journies and discoveries.

6 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Oxford Scholar In The Clean Room, December 26, 2001

By 

JRob (IL USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (Hardcover)

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.

4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A different view of the valley, removed from the hype, September 26, 2002

By 

Sellam Ismail (Silicon Valley, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley (Hardcover)

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.