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News :: Miscellaneous
Secrets of Silicon Valley Current rating: 0
12 May 2001
Premiering in Seattle on May 19, this important new documentary blows the lid off the Brave New World of high-tech globalism.
It would be cool if someone could offer to donate a copy of this new video to the local IMC.
WashTech is the voice of the digital workforce at:
http://www.washtech.org/news/051001_SSV.php3
Seattle WA - "Secrets of Silicon Valley" is a shocking expose of the hidden downsides of the Internet "revolution" and also a funny and moving meditation on America's love affair with technology. Told without narration, the film chronicles a tumultuous year in the lives of two young activists grappling with rapid social change and the meaning of globalization on their own doorsteps.

"As a former assembly line worker in Silicon Valley, I could write a book praising this documentary," says Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Professor of Ethnic and Women's Studies at Cal State University, Hayward. "It explodes the secret of a non-unionized, mostly non-white, female work force, underpaid and insecure, the reality beneath the glitz of obscene profits."

"Secrets of Silicon Valley" is a shocking expos� of the hidden downsides of the Internet revolution and also a funny and moving meditation on America's love affair with technology. Told without narration, the film chronicles a tumultuous year in the lives of two young activists grappling with rapid social change and the meaning of globalization on their own doorsteps.

Magda Escobar runs Plugged In, a computer training center in a low income community just a few miles from the epicenter of high-tech wealth. Silicon Valley's skyrocketing rents and increasing evictions are driving out the people she is supposed to serve, but Magda struggles to find Plugged In a new home and receives unexpected help from President Clinton and Hewlett-Packard.

Raj Jayadev is a temporary worker who confronts the hype of Silicon Valley by revealing the reality of an unseen and unacknowledged army of immigrant workers. Hired by the world's largest temporary agency, Manpower, Inc., to work in a Hewlett-Packard assembly plant, he is laid off when he organizes other "temps" to challenge health and safety conditions. But Raj finds surprising and funny ways to take the controversy to the Internet, the public and the press.

Throughout the film, high tech CEOs and moguls comment on Magda and Raj�s stories with revealing insights on time, technology, greed, and globalization.

Part "Modern Times," part "Bladerunner," this is the first and only film to take a critical look at the social impact of the new millennium�s high technology. It will provoke heated discussion in community groups, high tech forums, unions, and classes in history, technology, sociology, business, anthropology, economics, ethnic and women's studies.

Produced and Directed by: Alan Snitow & Deborah Kaufman 2001, 60 minutes, color
See also:
http://www.secretsofsiliconvalley.org/
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