Class 9 - Places // Silicon Valley
Apéritif
- Prelinger Archives, Electronic Computers Improve Management Control
RFC as koan
- RFC 1087: Ethics and the Internet (Jan 1989)
Emulator as koan
Themes
- Silicon Valley
- war/defense funding in academia
- company “acquisitions” practice
- worth estimation
Prompts
- How much of the internet has been funded through war/defense budgets?
- How has defense budgets changed the way the internet works?
- How has commercialization and capitalism changed the way the internet works?
Description
Episodes: - S3E2 “One Way or Another”, S3E3 “Flipping the Switch”, S3E4 “Rules of Honorable Play”
Over the past few episodes, the characters are thrown into the pressures of Silicon Valley – pitching to venture capital, buying/selling companies, government contracts, ousting of executives, overworking, and so on. The San Francisco Bay Area wasn’t the only major “innovation hub” for U.S. technology, but it has had the largest staying power and impact. The physical damage caused by Silicon Valley was largely covered in #4: Material; this covers the economic, structural, and emotional impact.
Readings
- Paulina Borsook, How the Internet ruined San Francisco
- Kim-Mai Cutler, The Unicorn Hunters, Logic Mag Issue 4: Scale (April 2018)
- Jack Poulson, Reports of a Silicon Valley/Military Divide Have Been Greatly Exaggerated (July 2020)
- Julie Polito, Stoking the Net’s Growth: Interview with Ellen Hancock (October 1999) [note: 2 pages]
- Megan Finn, Quinn DuPont, From closed world discourse to digital utopianism: the changing face of responsible computing at Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (1981–1992}
- Denise Caruso, 10 years of a wonderfully bad attitude (July 1991)