The second project followed closely on the first as our team explored these digital device users in their workspaces in Fortune 1000 companies. In this project the ultimate focus was on the devices and again, in oblique ethnographic fashion, we explored their link to technology by examining how relationships were enacted using these devices. In both cases we employed the ethnographic wisdom that asking for values directly rarely works, instead approaching the topic indirectly by getting thick descriptions, rule and stories. In January, they both went to Dublin, Ireland and continued to collect interviews. . . Work, Identity and Community in Silicon Valley Concurent with the collaborative research with IFTF, the SVCP team were conducting 170 in-depth interviews in the Work, Identity and Community in Silicon Valley project.
Workers flow through a mosaic of organizational cultures in their daily lives.
Individuals must negotiate this metamorphic social terrain by creating social networks that can sustain them and new metaphors to justify their strategies. Work is the dominant venue for this creativity. Work and non-work time become blurred. Community activity, justified by its value to work, reaches into education, communications, recreation and family. Community becomes transformed into an instrumental force for production.