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Silicon Valley Startup a History of Work & Life in the Information Economy

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Silicon Valley Startup a History of Work & Life in the Information Economy Silicon Valley Startup A History of Work & Life in the Information Economy At the turn of the 20th century, the roughly forty mile stretch of land between San Francisco and San Jose was known primarily for its lush farmlands and apricot groves. The locals referred to it fondly as “The Valley of Hearts De- light.” Today, we call this area Silicon Valley, and it serves as the geograph- ical and spiritual center of the global information economy. In this course we will explore the history, culture, and mythology of Silicon Valley and its many imitators, with a particular focus on the emergence of the start-up firm as the defining organizational form of the modern information society. Why, in an industry that creates the information technologies that suppos- edly make time and space irrelevant, is this particular place still so essential? Drawing on the best literature on Silicon Valley — historical, contemporary, and literary — we will attempt to situate Silicon Valley in a larger context of the history of the American West, the enduring spirit of technological utopi- anism in American history, and the social and labor history of the modern Information Age. Nathan Ensmenger School of Informatics & Computing I400 • Fall 2015 I400: Silicon Valley Startup Professor Nathan Ensmenger 303 Informatics West Office Hours: M 9-11 am, T 1:30-2:30 pm [email protected] Course Format: The seminar meets only once a week. This means that attendance is particularly im- portant. If you do need to miss class please let me know in advance. The readings in this course are, for the most part, (reasonably) short, provocative, and (generally) enjoyable. You will need to do the reading, and are expected to show up to class prepared to discuss them in an informed manner. The readings in the course draw on the very best literature from history, sociology, anthropology, and geography, as well as film, literature, and other forms of popular culture . You need to prepare each week’s readings in advance of the first meeting. Expectations/Grading: The goal of the course is to provide you with the tools for critically thinking about Silicon Valley and its role in our culture, economy, and political life. Our primary methodology will be historical. This might at first seem unusual, since so much of the rhetoric of the Information Age asserts that there is no relevant history, and that we are living in an era in which the old rules and modes of thinking no longer apply. But we are not the first society to believe itself to be living through an un- precedented technological revolution, and so in this course, we will learn to apply the time-honored perspectives of the humanistic disciplines to the study of con- temporary technological developments. Students will learn to think historically, to broaden their perspective on the rela- tionship between technology and society to include insights from the humanities and social sciences, and to master the very best available relevant scholarly litera- ture. Your grade in this course will be based on four components: class participation (30%), a series of short assignments (20%), two short book/film reviews (30%), and a final paper/project (20%). 2 Course Schedule I Go West, Young Man! This is our first meeting, so there are no readings, but you will need to showupand say smart things. We will be introducing the deep history of Silicon Valley, with a particular focus on the mythology of the West in American history. II Accidental Empires A second introduction, this time to the modern mythology of the computer nerd. Readings: Robert Cringley, Triumph of the Nerds (video documentary); Ben Nu- gent, Nerds: A story of my people (selected chapters) III Origin Story I: Steeple Building The story of Silicon Valley begins in the interwar period of the 1920s and 1930s, with a deliberate attempt by regional universities like Stanford and MIT to culti- vate their relationship with government and industry. Readings: Stuart W. Leslie and Bruce Hevly, “Steeple Building at Stanford: Electri- cal Engineering, Physics, Microwave Research” in Proceedings of the IEEE 73 (July 1985): 1168-1180; Nathan Rosenberg and Richard Nelson, “The Roles of Universi- ties in the Advance of Industrial Technology,” Research Policy 23 (1994); David A. Kaplan, “Chapter II: Genesis” The Silicon Boys and Their Valley of Dreams (Harper Perennial: New York, 2000), 28-53. IV Origin Story II: The Cold War Before there were computers, there was the military industrial complex. Even to this day, the largest employer in Silicon Valley is a missile defense company, not an Internet start-up. In this session, we explore the complicated relationship between computers and the military. Readings: Paul Edwards, “Why Build Computers? The Military Role in Computer Research” in The Closed World: Computers and Politics of Discourse in Cold War America (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1996); Stuart W. Leslie, “Pentagon West,” The Cold War and American Science (New York: Columbia University Press, 1993), 241-256. 3 V Why Place Matters We might all live in Cyberspace, but Cyperspace lives in Silicon Valley. In this week, we will find out why. Readings: AnnaLee Saxenian, Regional Advantage (selected chapters) VI From Silicon Beach to Silicon Fen The role of Frederick Terman as the architect of Silicon Valley has been greatly ex- aggerated, but this did not stop him from becoming a consultant to the world. In this session we explore the many imitators of Silicon Valley, including the Silicon Parkway (NJ), Silicon Triangle (NC), Silicon Alley (NYC), Silicon Forest (Oregon), Silicon Desert (Israel), Silicon Glen (Scotland), Silicon Fen (Cambridge), and many, many others. Readings: Bennett Harrison, Lean and Mean, “Is Silicon Valley an Industrial Dis- trict?”; Manuel Castells and Peter Hall, Technopoles of the World, “Silicon Valley: Where It All Began”; Stuart Leslie and Robert Kargon, “Selling Silicon Valley: Fred- erick Terman’s Model for Regional Advantage” Business History Review (1996); VII Silicon Valley Syndrome By the late 1980s observers were already noting a distinctive work culture emerging from Silicon Valley. At times this was celebrated, at others decried. In this session, we will look at success, stress, sex, and everything in-between (at least as it related to Silicon Valley) Readings: David Beers, Blue Sky Dreams (selected chapters); Thomas Mahon, Charged Bodies: People, Power and Paradox in Silicon Valley VIII The Dark Side of High Tech Did you know that there are more Superfund sites (environmental disaster areas) in Silicon Valley than in any other region of the United States? Most Americans do not. We look at the social and environmental consequences of the semiconductor industry, with a particular focus on the use of contingent and immigrant labor. Readings: Dennis Hayes, Behind the Silicon Curtain (selected chapters); New York Times, “Homeless on 50,000 Dollars a Year”; Lenny Siegel and John Markoff. “Toxic Time Bomb.” in The High Cost of High Tech. 4 IX Venture Capital The emergence of the modern start-up economy is only partly a story of technol- ogy. Another key factor is the rise of the venture capital industry, which is also an invention of the Cold War. Readings: Paul Gompers, “The Rise and Fall of Venture Capital.” Business & Eco- nomic History 23, no. 2 (1994): 1-26.; Martin Kenney and Richard Florida, “Venture Capital in Silicon Valley: Fueling New Firm Formation”, Florida and Smith, “The Case Against Government Venture Capital” X Dot-com Explosion The dot-com explosion (and collapse) was the most famous — but by no meansthe first or only — of the boom-and-bust economic cycles of the information industry. From the “go-go years” of the late 1970s to the present, we explore the history of such cycles and their effect on work and life in Silicon Valley. Readings: Michael Lewis, The New, New Thing (selected chapters); Charles Fergu- son, High St@kes, No Prisoners, A Winner’s Tale of Greed and Glory in the Internet Wars (selected chapters). XI Silicon Valley in Popular Culture Silicon Valley is everywhere. Why are nerds suddenly so popular? Readings: Episode 1, Silicon Valley (HBO Series); Douglas Coupland, Microserfs (Regan Books, 1996) XII The Political Economy of Open Source Of all of the cultural forms and economic models to come out of Silicon Valley, per- haps the most innovative and influential has been open source. From Wikipedia to the Human Genome project, the idea that openness = innovation has been enor- mously influential. In this session, we explore the meaning of openness in software, culture, science, sexuality, and social norms. Readings: Stallman, Richard “Why Software Should Be Free”; Christopher Kelty, Two bits: the cultural significance of free software (Duke University Press, 2008). Excerpts. 5 XIII Where did all the Women Go? Silicon Valley prides itself on its openness and egalitarianism. High tech is a mer- itocracy, or so the start-up companies like to claim. But Silicon Valley has a huge problem with diversity, particularly gender diversity. In this week, we find out why. Sherry Turkle, “Hackers: Loving the Machine for Itself.” In The Second Self: Com- puters and the Human Spirit (Simon Schuster, 1984); Jane Porter, “The Fascinating Evolution of Brogramming and the Fight to get Women Back” (online); Kieran Sny- der; “Why women leave tech: It’s the culture, not because ’math is hard”’ (online); Kyle Wagner, “The Future Of The Culture Wars Is Here, And It’s Gamergate” (on- line) XIV Silicon Valley Discovers the World For many decades, observers of American politics were surprised by the lack of po- litical involvement of tech companies and entrepreneurs. All that has changed in the past few years. In this session, we explore the role of Silicon Valley in domestic and international politics.
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