contado prjct

The Silicon Valley: an endless metropolis where wire meets iron and cool cyberpunk kids drink liquid nitrogen and get digital jazz plugged straight into their ears. Right? THINK AGAIN. While our digital 21st century owes a lot to the Bay Area, the present youth culture may be a bit different than the William Gibson you read in your history class.
Alison Frost calls her generation the “first generation” of Milpitas, 10 miles east of San Jose. For this project I wanted to feel the pulse of the East/South bay's beating heart, immerse myself in unromanticized, unadulterated social realism. My interview with the Junior student from Porter proved to both insightful and humbling. But before I get into drama of the city over the hill some must needed historical background of Milpitas will ensue.
San Jose has a rich fertile past graced by the likes of Steinbeck in novels. The latter half of the 20th century proved dramatic for the corn ridden land. Few tourists passing through highway 880 would believe that as late as the 1980's farms stood where great concrete buildings now tower. The corn of of the land gave Milpitas it's name, which is a rather cute and informal variation of Spanish word milpa, “land where maize is grown.” The town began as many others did under Spanish rule in the 1800's. The soldier Jose Higuera established the first large scale ranch and abode hacienda, now a tourist attraction in Higuera Adobe park (1). San Francisco's horses were fed by Milpitas hay well into the 1980's; fields of hay can be seen in Bob Burill's cult horror movie The Milipitas Monster (1). The Silicon Valley got it's start a century behind with the opening of Stanford University in 1891, a “practical” university encouraging science and cooperation with local industry (2). In 1912 a San Jose radio station began America's first serial broadcasts; in 1927 Philo T. Farnsworth transmitted the first television image (a dollar sign...prophecy?) in San Francisco (2). Santa Clara County birthed IBM, Apple, Adobe, Intel, Netscape Communications (first commercial internet browser) (2). “San Francisco itself, for many years, mainly participated in the high-tech boom second hand -- through its investment banks, law firms, graphics studios and trade publications. But over the course of the '90s, technology has reached right into the heart of the city,(2)” claims a SF Chronicle article titled “Growth of a Silicon Empire.”
Fast forward to yesterday, ten o clock PM. Frost provides the cookies and the non fiction. Minutes before I was on the phone with her, complaining of a lack of ideas for a certain Contado project, wanting experience from a blood native of the Bay Area. She immediatley became excited; hers was a story waiting to be told.
“Do you want to know why people come to Milpitas?” she began. Because Milpitas is one of the most diverse cities in the united states, one where the number of foreign born residents outnumber the locals (our country's ninth) (3). First Alison told me about her immediate group of friends. Ivy and Katherine's parents are part of the Vietnamese diaspora that fled to a capitalist/democracy during the war. Exactly when they came, Alison could not say, citing that “Vietnamese moms won't admit their age.” Their fathers were acquaintances in their adolescence. “It was too hot in Vietnam-- when they wanted to cool down they went to the graveyard to put their faces on tombstones.” Katherine's dad fought with the South Vietnamese in the war, and when they left the country for America with a communist/North Vietnamese flag to mark severed ties. Lenine grew up in Manila, Phillipines and came to Milpitas at age eight. In Manila she was kidnapped by a jealous neighbor as a one day old child; in America she learned English from “Sweet Valley High.” Carlos is from Mexico but doesn't talk about it much. Tommy grew up in Jalisco where he “saw much slaughter,” open air markets full of chickens getting twisted.
And now most of their parents work in the tech industry, or so Alison thinks. “Most of my friends don't really ask their parents exactly what they do, or aren't told.” Even Alison, who claims to be the “only white person in Milpitas (sic)” is herself a daughter of immigrant parents. Her father spent the first few years of his life in Southern England. His parents fought with the Royal Air Force in WW2. After reparations they settled down for a child and moved to the Bay Area to work for IBM. “Employees of IBM used to joke that it stood for 'I've Been Moved.'” Alison's father now works for CISCO writing computer manuals.
Nobody in Milipitas, even the first generation kids, associate with being American. “They're still Chinese, or Mexican when you ask where they're from. Upon being asked the same question myself, I responded, 'England,' which surprised her. 'Oh, I thought you were white,' she said.” Alison calls it a culture just starting out, a timid place governed by a distinctly “asian” form of ethics. The youth are well behaved compared to there more central Bay Area peers. “Asian Disappointment” is taken very seriously. “I was always the only white person in my AP classes.” Most of the 3,000 members of the student body graduate to continuing education at a university or JC. Alison was considered rebellious amongst her peers because she seemed to care the least about her grades, despite graduating with, what, Alison, like a 3.9? “Uh-huh.”
Vietnamese people love Clinton, Alison claims, for the dot com boom. Most Vietnamese vote Republican as a way to distance themselves thoroughly from Communism. According to recent article by the New American Media, “Vietnamese refugees to the United States subsequently found strength and inspiration in Ronald Reagan, who stood steadfast against communism during the Cold War and who made boat people into political symbols of the horror of communism.”
“It's a pretty strange place,” says Alison. Filipino dancers, ASB kids, World of Warcraft nerds, non assimilationist white goths. “I could write about this place for my Contado assignment,” I decided as the cookies were coming out and the milk was being poured. But it is really strange, as Alison would like my readers to believe? Or is this mult-ethnic experience becoming the norm for the 21st century? Furthermore, how does this tie into the literature we've been studying in class?
I began having second thoughts. But then, on my way home, I thought of something Alison said, something to the effect that in Milpitas there is no age, “everything is new, and there are no antiques.” There is a kind of transformative process happening in the bay area that the beats fantasied about in North Beach. This kind of story is becoming boring, routine, mundanely urban. I think that's healthy. White people are now experiencing marginalization in their own country, its shaking things up. The craziest thing Alison ever did was not study for an AP test; she is a rebel of a new generation. To many the Silicon Valley may represent the industrial Moloch prophesied by Ginsberg's Howl. But to Alison, Milpitas is home.
My hometown experience, a few hours north, was also similarly diverse. The Napa Valley is as much a part of the SF contado, the wine industry everyone is trying to claim as their own (people have gotten trouble for selling “Napa Valley Wine” that wasn't grown in the valley!) And that industry is very much centered on migrant culture. Our locals are marginalized, although not as drastically as in Milpitas. This area is home to a lot of people enrolled in this class, and many will be aware of this here paradigm shift that been occuring for the past few decades. And it is "strange," growing up in the places we do, in this brand new consumer society that hasn't really been attached to a specific culture yet. Kids grow up bored. Well, I think all that boredom is coming to an end. We may not think it, but we are all cyberpunk products of the Silicon Valley. We are the YOUTUBE generation. The kind of generation....well, that's for you to decide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekoVRComzzQ




SOURCES

(1)
Munzel, Steve. Milipitas History Home Page, http://www.milpitashistory.org/home/index.html#milpa

(2)
Norr, Henry. "Growth of a Silicon Empire: Bay Area's Fertile Intellectual Ground Helped Sprout High Technology Industry. SF GATE, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/1999/12/27/BU52171.DTL, Posted: December 27 1999

(3)
Lam, Andrew. "Why Little Saigon and Hanoi found Common Ground in John McCain." New America Media, Commentary, http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=986c40a1109ae5ad1c47b8eb34ec455a, Posted: Oct 30, 2008

Interview with Alison Frost. Nov.9th, 2008, her house.