Challenging The Chip - "New Wave of Technology"

"New Wave of Technology"

In his Foreword to the text, former Texas Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower makes out a case to explain how "technology happens". He writes: "Take cars. After Henry Ford began mass production, it took only a flash in time for these four-wheeled chunks of technology to wholly transform our landscape, environment, economy, culture, psychology, and ... well, pretty much our whole world. For better or worse, cars created freeways, shopping malls, McDonald's, drive-in banking -- even the Beach Boys!" Hightower argues: "A new wave of technology is sweeping the land. It is embodied in the tiny chips (and the computers they power) that are radically and rapidly transforming our world -- and, like the automobile, not always for the better."

He also contends that the story of the "dark side of the chip" needs to be "told and retold" across the "global village" before it is too late to do anything about it.

The book narrates the story of how the high-tech industry grew in the "Valley of Heart's Delight" (before the place got renamed to Silicon Valley) and how Santa Clara Valley fruit-processing workers such as Alida Hernandez got reinvented into "clean room" workers. This "deplorable pattern is still being replicated around the world".