Behind the Silicon Curtain: The Seductions of Work in a Lonely Era

Ross Willmot is Executive Director of the Ontario Association for
Continuing Education.

This depressing—albeit well-researched and well-written—study of
California’s Silicon Valley by a former graduate sociology student at
Carleton University makes us wonder if the same conditions exist in
Canada’s electronic industry outside Ottawa. Hayes has used his
experience as a staff writer for a San Francisco computer magazine and
worker in various capacities for Silicon Valley firms to expose what is
sometimes considered to be a utopian industry. He takes us on a trip
through the Valley, introducing us to many workers subjected to
degrading living and working conditions, and exposed to harmful
chemicals both inside and outside their plants. We learn how Asian
immigrants and temporary workers are taken advantage of. Silicon Valley
has the highest job turnover and the highest industrial vacancy rate in
the United States. Owing to the uncertainty of defence contracts,
schools are closed, housing costs escalate, child care is inadequate.
Three quarters of the population are substance abusers, even on the job;
over half are in therapy; and they have the highest divorce rate in the
country. Compulsive consumption and obsessive fitness are widely used as
therapy. When times were good, millionaires were produced in record
numbers. At the same time, workers were paid so little they also had to
go on relief.

“An indomitable power to subvert economic and political policy now
resides in the consoles of over 30 million computer workers who process
the fiscal, economic, and social alchemy that is late capitalism,”
concludes Hayes. “It is a lever contemporary social critiques largely
ignore; perhaps rightly so. For without the political will, or at least
a glimmer of collective self-consciousness the lever cannot be pulled on
behalf of meaningful and popular change.”