/books/charged-bodies

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Thomas Mahon @TomMahon

edited by Margaret Eldridge @Margaret

At the heart of Silicon Valley’s meteoric rise is a story etched in the lives of those who shaped it and those who were forever transformed by it. Author Tom Mahon provides an insider’s perspective on the birth of the semiconductor industry, which sparked the region’s transformation from sleepy farmland to the heart and soul of the high-tech revolution. Through twenty-five extended, in-person interviews you’ll meet a diverse cast of characters whose goal was to create technology and tools in service to humanity. In the Afterword to this edition, the author questions whether they accomplished their objectives and urges readers to rise up and rethink technology.

What did it take to create the atmosphere that transformed rich farmland into the wealthy center of high-tech? Five climates lined up in just the right way. Educational institutions (Stanford and Berkeley); an attractive location with balmy, Mediterranean-like weather; a history of technology development (Federal Telegraph in the early twentieth century); financial risk taking (the gold rush); and a cultural climate near the center of an ideological revolution (the hippie movement). The Santa Clara Valley had them all. In spades.

Before personal computers, or the Internet, or social media came chips. Inventive minds took advantage of the quad-electron structure and unique properties—insulative and conductive—of silicon to create semiconductors. But Charged Bodies is more than just the story of new technologies emerging from “The Valley of the Heart’s Delight.” Using an approach like The Canterbury Tales, Tom Mahon captures the spirit of Silicon Valley in the 80s through the stories of the people all around him. The inventors and bankers have their say. But so do a range of other people who lived through that transition. Listen as artists and hackers, detectives and journalists, lawyers and scientists, flappers and philosophers tell the story of Silicon Valley in their own words.

Tom Mahon was a documentary filmmaker when he was engaged to produce a commercial film for a computer company in 1974, the year the microprocessor was launched and began to change everything. Soon after, he moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, and began a half-century career as an industry publicist, as well as writing about Silicon Valley as novelist, playwright, essayist, and public speaker.

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