Anthropologists Peer Into a Valley of Silicon

Anthropologist Jan English-Lueck has studied the habits, rituals, and beliefs of communities in Suriname and China. But they had nothing on the exotic behavior just outside her door.

"Where else do you find a family getting together and calling it a 'team' meeting?" she asks. "Or where else would a trip to Fry's [electronics store] be a normal family outing?"

The place is Silicon Valley, the defining edge of America's emerging cyberculture and the subject of a multiyear field study by Ms. English-Lueck and colleagues Chuck Darrah and James Freeman, all teachers at San Jose State University.

Silicon Valley, once dotted by orchards of plums and apricots, is now the epicenter of the nation's Digital Revolution. Companies and communities around the globe are trying to understand and mimic its formula for success - or at least not get blindsided by the next technological innovation to emerge from here.

Mr. Darrah's project won't give anthropologists complete answers right now. The study, which began in 1991, will continue for another three to four years. But he and his colleagues are beginning to draw some early conclusions from more than 240 interviews of people in and out of the technology industry.

"This is a place marked by a faith in the application of technology to all kinds of problems, in and out of the workplace. You use hardware and software to assemble data, and information to solve problems," says Darrah, chairman of the university's anthropology department. "I go to a PTA meeting and we're talking about El Nio and another parent says we should assemble a database to help us track the weather," recalls English-Lueck by way of illustration.

There are two other overriding features to Silicon Valley culture, according to Darrah. One is the valley's ethnic diversity (the nonwhite population, dominated by Asians and Latinos, will soon outnumber whites) - the result in part of the technology sector's shortage of home-grown skilled labor. The other is the power of the "mythology" that living here offers a ringside seat to history, a belief that has a way of being self-fulfilling by attracting top talent driven by almost missionary zeal.

The valley's uniqueness

Those hoping to capture and transport the magic may be disappointed.

"People have spent millions trying to find out how to emulate this elsewhere in the world," says Annalee Saxenian, author of "Silicon Valley: Regional Advantage" and an associate professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning at the University of California at Berkeley. But she sees circumstances here not likely to be matched elsewhere. "The early pioneers had a tabula rasa here. They not only pioneered new technology, they pioneered new organizational forms."

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