1. Space over Place: Situated innovation practices in Silicon Valley Trond Arne Undheim NTNU, Norway, June 2000.

2. Dramatis Personae

• personae (Venture Capitalists, entrepreneurs, Sarah, and Robert)

• sociologists of globalization (Beck, 2000; Castells, 1996)

• artifacts (Internet, Palm Pilots, cars, roads, apples)

• places (clubs, bazaars, markets, universities)

3. The setting

• We are in Silicon Valley between 1999 and 2000, in the period of New Economy, a time and space of flows - Internetted, global, anb networked. The world is conquered by Manuel Castells and his Network Society Troops. Only a few villages resist.

4.

• A Silicon Valley knowledge worker goes to work in Cisco village together with 8000 co-workers, all in equal cubicles.

• Sarah: Cisco will change the way people live, play, live and learn

• The storyteller: But how?

• Sarah: We do everything online

Cisco Systems Inc. San Jose, June 2000

5.

• In the year 2000 Silicon Valley people log on to company Intranets, check emails constantly, get SMS, answer cellphones, plan meetings, get instructions, and work face-to-screen.

6.

• Technology is paramount reality and money and progress the only measures of success.

• Silicon Valley people spend their time, energy and effort in a constant interplay of spaces.

7.

• In the year 2000 everything is global and networked

8.

• Storyteller: Whats your workday like?

• Robert: I spend my day building start-up companies. I see them every day, set up meetings for them, coach them, encourage them, and listen to them

• Storyteller: Whats your biggest challenge?

• Robert: Trying to convince venture capitalists to drive up to Concord even though it interrupts their lunch schedule

Meanwhile, in Concord, 2 hours driving and 1 Bay Bridge away from Silicon Valley

9.

• There are others who resist, too. Dans Internet incubator has Berkeley as a niche. Privileged access to start-ups, professors pass on deal-flow, and Dans network of contacts is indispensable to young entrepreneurs.

• (An email arrives on the Palm Pilot): Rooftop party for Internet professionals in San Francisco. Be there

• Storyteller: Virtual culture has sexual needs

Enter Storyteller (watching a drum-circle on the Berkeley university campus):

10.

• Choir (chanting): Those who use Internet for everything will not taste the apples of Concord or San Franciscos Rooftop pleasures. Technology can not take away the limits - the socialities, moods, and materialities - of the human condition

Enter Deus ex Machina

11.

• Storyteller (soliloquy):

• • To become Silicon Valley workers, aspiring start-ups engage in convincing work - being there when places emerge and making places happen.

One month later, during a walk late at night on Ocean Beach, San Francisco

12.

• Silicon Valley is not a hub in a space of flows. The Valley is a laboratory where things (ideas, people, visions) are mobilized to build companies. This happens by way of engineers, helpers, and tools (capital, experience, technology).

• The Valley is above all a place, a geographical area where people meet and are passionate - about simple things like women and fast cars as Knorr-Cetina says, but also about technology, about the beach, and about visions of the future.

13.

• Communities of practice (Wenger, 1998) arise because knowledge is embodied (STS). In order to be a persona (a person with a mask, who plays a role), you need to act

• To act you use props (Internet, apples) and show up on stage to make new places and make yourself heard in established ones (markets)

14.

• Other storytellers will speak of Castells conquests when they are over. Are Open Source movements or Financial Markets truly Avant-Garde or merely shortlived spaces of flows?

15.

• Robert and Dan: Regardless of my international links, my use of Internet, and the global markets we are embedded in our own place of work

• Sarah: Cisco is my social circle. Work is my life. I love Sherry Turkle

• Storyteller: I give up

Exit Castells