Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley is a commonly used nickname for the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in northern California, USA, originally referring to the concentration of silicon chip innovators and manufacturers, but eventually becoming a metaphor for the entire concentration of high tech businesses. It encompasses the northern part of Santa Clara Valley and adjacent communities in the southern parts of the San Francisco Peninsula and East Bay. It reaches approximately from Menlo Park (on the Peninsula) and the Fremont/Newark area in the East Bay down through San Jose, centered roughly on Sunnyvale. In north Santa Clara County, an industrial "Big Dipper" can be seen from aerial photographs because the buildings and streets are laid out in a fashion that is easily distinguishable from the residential areas. (http://maps.google.com/maps?ll=37.304051,-121.872734&spn=0.11,0.18&t=k—zoom out for a wider view.)

Further reading

• Behind the Silicon Curtain: The Seductions of Work in a Lonely Era, Dennis Hayes, London: Free Association Books 1989
• Cultures@Silicon Valley, J. A. English-Lueck, Stanford: Stanford University Press 2002
• The Silicon Valley of Dreams: Environmental Injustice, Immigrant Workers, and the High-Tech Global Economy, David Naguib Pellow and Lisa Sun-Hee Park, New York University Press 2003
• What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry, John Markoff, Viking 2005