ARTIFACTS: An Archaeologist's Year in Silicon Valley.

Cambridge, MA:: The MIT Press,, (2001). SIGNED hardcover first edition -. Fine in a fine dust jacket (as new.). First printing. A book in which the author combines "a reporter's instinct for a good interview with traditional archaeological training [to bring] 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 She explores the sense that whatever one has is instantly superseded by the next new thing -- and the effect this has on economic and social values.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.'" Although written almost 20 years ago, the contrasts she mentions have only increased in the interim. SIGNED on the title page. Text is preceded by a 32 page photo essay; illustrated with other photographs throughout. Selected further reading, index. xlix. 244 pp.