The Silicon Valley Ethos: Tech Industry Products, Discourses, and Practices

Abstract

This special issue of Television and New Media critically examines the ethos of Silicon Valley, imagined broadly, by analyzing its products, discourses, and practices. We argue that, as a technology industry and a cultural force, Silicon Valley’s practices and discourses reflect and produce particular social and economic investments in technology as a tool of empowerment and social change. Overall, the issue argues that the ethos of Silicon Valley privileges disruption over sustainability, sharing economies over union labor, personalized access over public health, data over meaning, and security over freedom. We analyze the ways this ethos extends beyond Silicon Valley itself and shapes the way we think about and act toward labor, security, sexuality, and health. As such, Silicon Valley’s technology products—as well as the way we think about them—affect the social, political, and economic conditions of everyday life.