Friday, December 11, 2015

DHQ Review // Silicon Valley and Silicon Slopes

My review of Alice Marwick's Status Update is now available on Digital Humanities Quarterly.  Marwick's book is in many ways an ethnography of Silicon Valley entrepreneurial culture as it's lived through social media and it's an illuminating description of life lived in a distinct time and in a distinct place.  Living here in Utah in 2015 I keep asking: do her descriptions have applicability here and now as well?

Apropos of the above question long term I would like the Weber State Center For Technology Outreach to invite in a few speakers who can talk about Silicon Valley culture and compare it to Utah's own indigenous entrepreneurial culture (which is sometimes called Silicon Slopes).  A couple of years ago Vauhini Vara at the New Yorker ran a piece called How Utah Became The Next Silicon Valley.  It's time for some followup reflections.