Charged Bodies

People, Power, and Paradoxes That Launched Silicon Valley

by: Thomas Mahon

Published 2024-03-22
Internal code tmbodies
Print status In Print
Pages 323
User level
Keywords computing history, silicon valley
Related titles
  • Fire in the Valley, Michael Swaine and Paul Freiberger
  • Competing with Unicorns, Jonathan Rasmusson
  • All books in the Tech Stories series
ISBN 9798888650592
Other ISBN Channel epub: 9798888650615
Channel PDF: 9798888650622
Safari: 9798888650608
BISACs BUS077000
COM080000
COM080000
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Highlight

At the heart of Silicon Valley’s meteoric rise is a story etched in the lives of those who shaped it and those who were forever transformed by it. Author Tom Mahon provides an insider’s perspective on the birth of the semiconductor industry, which sparked the region’s transformation from sleepy farmland to the heart and soul of the high-tech revolution. Through twenty-five extended, in-person interviews you’ll meet a diverse cast of characters whose goal was to create technology and tools in service to humanity. In the Afterword to this edition, the author questions whether they accomplished their objectives and urges readers to rise up and rethink technology.

Description

What did it take to create the atmosphere that transformed rich farmland into the wealthy center of high-tech? Five climates lined up in just the right way. Educational institutions (Stanford and Berkeley); an attractive location with balmy, Mediterranean-like weather; a history of technology development (Federal Telegraph in the early twentieth century); financial risk taking (the gold rush); and a cultural climate near the center of an ideological revolution (the hippie movement). The Santa Clara Valley had them all. In spades.

Before personal computers, or the Internet, or social media came chips. Inventive minds took advantage of the quad-electron structure and unique properties—insulative and conductive—of silicon to create semiconductors. But Charged Bodies is more than just the story of new technologies emerging from “The Valley of the Heart’s Delight.” Using an approach like The Canterbury Tales, Tom Mahon captures the spirit of Silicon Valley in the ’80s through the stories of the people all around him. The inventors and bankers have their say. But so do a range of other people who lived through that transition. Listen as artists and hackers, detectives and journalists, lawyers and scientists, flappers and philosophers tell the story of Silicon Valley in their own words.

Contents and Extracts