The High Cost of High Tech: The Dark Side of the Chip
R. D. Berg · Canadian Journal of Communication · 1986
Non-scholarly, descriptive, comprehensive, factual, and up-to-date, this book destroys conventional wisdom about the social impact of microelectronics and computers, giving a detailed accounting of the second lndustrial Revolution as it occurred in Silicon Valley (Santa Clara County, California), a place often seen as a model for post-mechanical development. Its chapters also deal eloquently with the global impact of the computer and microelectronics industries, focussing on such issues as the computer's effects on the arm's race, individual privacy and freedom, education, employment, two-way communications links such as the telephone and postal services, post-mechanical industrialization and the environment, the Asian assembly labour force, and the trading of information.