“Silicon Fucking Valley” that’s the title of this series in six 15-minute episodes produced by Pierre Schneidermann and Baptiste Giudicelli. With this catchy title which sounds like a slogan, the authors take us into the epicenter of new technologies. A good opportunity to travel these tens of kilometers where the largest companies in the world are located (Apple, Meta, Google and many others), to meet opportunistic investors and prophets of modern times who work, in their words, to make the world a better place .
The series deconstructs some myths and beliefs, specific to the Valley, they return to the tumultuous history of this land of silicon, nuance the success of Steve Jobs, the founder of Apple, who is far from having had alone, a revelation in his garage. In the first episodes, we better understand the crucial role of companies less known to the general public like idea of sheltering young students/entrepreneurs to better incubate their start-ups and reap the fruits and profits.
Stories sometimes known but always necessary to remember to participate in our digital culture and allow everyone to be able to decode our connected world a little. The great originality of the series lies in the choice of the smuggler, because it is not the two journalists who are in the image but a certain Luc Julia, an engineer, a French entrepreneur living for a long time in California and known for having created the voice assistant Siri which would later be bought for a small fortune by Apple.
Luc Julia contrasts with the polite spirit of the region, he composes with a flowery language like his eternal Hawaiian shirts. He carries our Frenchies around without his Tesla and between two anecdotes, he serves as an intermediary to approach people from the flood, from a historian to an investor, even if it means forcing a few doors. We have to admit that it’s quite enjoyable to follow Grandpa Julia to Uncle Tom’s house.
Silicon Valley always wins in the end!
I had a little more difficulty with the sometimes frantic pace of the episodes squeezed into 15 short minutes. A very present voice-over which accompanies the viewer a little too much, who would at times benefit from breathing to find the time to construct their own thoughts. The writing follows the recipes of videos published on social networks whose objective is to capture attention.
The critical dimension of the Valley is well addressed, notably with housing problems and a final episode devoted to invisible workers, drivers, cleaners, waiters who earn a pittance to serve the techies. The exploration of this dark side is salutary but I still feel that the fascination remains among the authors, in a certain way the ideology of Silicon Valley wins the battle of stories. And even the war of words, the series available on arte cannot be with its original title on its Youtube channel because “Fucking” is censored by the platform, the authors must therefore redact their asterix title. Silicon Fucking Valley definitely a very good title, a series to watch on arte.tv.
