Customer Reviews

Artifacts: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

This was the 2nd of 7 books assigned as reading in an Art History course on artifacts and images. This book is difficult to read at first as the author seems to be randomly meandering through Silicon Valley with no purpose and no method. However, after reviewing her journey at the end of the book, I appreciate the way that the author doesn't do the work for the reader -- she spells nothing out and let's the reader draw his or her own connections. It is an interesting snapshot of life in 1999-2001 in SiVa. Her writing style is unique and clever, though it requires attention and thought from the reader.

This is not the best book for insights about the Valley. As the other reviewers suggest, this book has a bit of a split personality. On the one hand, one has a stream of observational anecdotes about the Valley. All of the usual cliches are here: Fry's, Buck's Diner, the cherry stands, the 101 traffic jams. These read like someone is trying their hand at writing a confessional ethnographic tale, but without a theoretical argument to provide a central structure. On the other hand, one has a stream of stories about computer-as-artifact -- tales about the collectors, like Nathan Myhrvold, and the people who recycle computers, and so on. One gets the feeling that the author set out to write a book about the latter, found it a bit thin, and the editor suggested fleshing it out with some bubble-era backdrop.

I have to agree with the reader from Woodside, CA. This book is an author's vacation documented with brief historical and computer tech stories. The Title, "Artifacts", does not reflect what the book's content is! It is confusing reading and very hard to follow. Dates, times and places are mixed up, depending on whenever the author remembered a fact or event, jotted it down, and then flips back to another event months after. Silicon Valley and its high tech companies, were not sought after depicting what our high tech companies here have provided, historically, for our world. From an archaeology standpoint, there must have been dozens of companies willing to impart knowledge and "artifacts" to the author, if the author's mind was actually on really gathering pertinent information. I agree, the author had a wonderful vacation here in the Silicon Valley and got to write out her personal travels as she thought they were. There are too many side stories here, including irrelevant cities, places and events written about that clearly have nothing to do with artifacts, the Silicon Valley, or Archaeology.

I had high expectations for this book, however I was severely disappointed. The book makes claims at being some sort of archaeologist's study, but it reads like a badly written vacation journal written by an easily impressed child. Finn locks onto the most trivial aspects of Silicon Valley and Internet culture and romanticizes them in a way that only someone who doesn't understand them would.