Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378
Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu
Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda
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Dr. Andrew Wood Office: HGH 210; phone: (408) 924-5378 Email: wooda@email.sjsu.edu Web: http://www.sjsu.edu/faculty/wooda |
"Locally, nationally and even internationally Silicon Valley has become mythic territory where bright young nerds in a garage can blend innovation and entrepreneurial savvy to create more democratic corporations. Silicon Valley is not just any California coastal town. For better or worse, it has become a metaphor for tomorrow land, a theme park of global corporate enthusiasm ranging from the small Ma and Pa Wang start-up to Hewlett Packard and Apple. Beneath the hype, however, there does exist a region occupied by real people who struggle to survive the consequences of the myth and create a microecology of meaning in their own lives."
We look to Silicon Valley as a laboratory for computer-mediated communities. This region, once known as the Valley of the Hearts Delight, has transformed itself into a high-tech cluster in which everything and everyone is wired to the hilt. At least, that's what the media report. We examine research efforts that complicate such unidimensional perspectives on public life in our community. In contrast to our local technopolis, we also visit Celebration, a communal attempt to live in the past rather than the future. However, this "new urbanist" cross between a garden city and company town conceals much within its planned neighborliness.
Ideal Community Project Due
Reading: Morris
Supplemental Website: The Silicon Valley Cultures Project
Supplemental Website: Wood's Celebration Resources
Supplemental Article: Brett Schulte's Presence of the past - includes an interview with Dr. Wood
Supplemental Notes: Langdon Winner: Silicon Valley mystery house
Viewing: X Files: Mulder and Scully visit a perfect community
Viewing: Pleasantville: Geography of Everywhere
Notes: Jan English-Lueck
Notes: Philip Morris
Activity: Where is Silicon Valley?
Activity: Time Travel
Off-campus webpages related to Technopolis
Jim McCormick, A Brief History of Silicon Valley
Scott Rosenburg, Lonesome Internet blues, take 2 - "Another day, another dubious study finds that the Net makes you lonely -- and the press goes nuts."
Steve and Mette Sabram, The Ultimate Silicon Valley Slang Page
San Jose Mercury News, The Cost of Living in Silicon Valley
Off-campus webpages related to Celebration
Ivan Chtcheglov, Formulary for a New Urbanism
CNU, Congress for the New Urbanism
Brandy Davis, New Urbanism: Cause for Celebration?
Jenny Diski, Celebrating conformity: Disney's Mickey Mouse utopia - "In this exclusive online essay taken from the current edition of the London Review of Books, Jenny Diski examines two accounts of life in Disney's new town, Celebration, USA"
Andres Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, The Second Coming of the American Small Town
David Harvey, The New Urbanism and the Communitarian Trap
Note: These pages exist outside of San Jose State University servers and their content is not endorsed by the page maintainer or any other university entity. These pages have been selected because they may provide some guidance or insight into the issues discussed in class. Because one can never step into the same electronic river twice, the pages may or may not be available when you request them. If you have any questions or suggestions, please email Dr. Andrew Wood.