[CPEO-BIF] IBM, Endicott, New York: "Microelectronic Disaster and the 'Smarter Planet' Paradox"

[Lenny Siegel <lennysiegel@gmail.com>]

Microelectronic Disaster and the "Smarter Planet" Paradox

by Peter C. Little
Anthropology and Environment Society
November 26, 2012

Less than 300 miles northwest of New York City, in the Empire State’s  
Southern Tier region, is the small community of Endicott. Nestled  
along the Susquehanna River, it is known as the "Birthplace of IBM."  
International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) - born of a  
marriage between the Computing, Tabulating, and Recording Company and  
the International Time Recording Company - opened its first plant in  
Endicott in 1924. From the 1920s to the 1970s, the IBM-Endicott  
facility figured centrally in electronic innovations, and the  
surrounding community enjoyed relative prosperity. Since the 1980s,  
however, the area has experienced steady decline due to IBM’s  
disinvestment in the Endicott facility and the outsourcing of  
manufacturing jobs.

When IBM sold its Endicott facility in 2002, the town was left with a  
collapsed tax base and a distressed workforce. My ethnographic  
research there began in 2002 as the sale of the IBM-Endicott plant  
was underway. It was then that I first learned about how, despite the  
plant’s closure, the specters of its business and technological  
innovations continued to haunt Endicott in the form of social,  
environmental, and health consequences. For example, with the IBM  
exodus, residents saw a crippling decline in local property values,  
the loss of jobs, and enduring environmental contamination problems  
that continue to be the target of many local public health concerns.  
As a former resident of the community who saw this debate unfold at  
my doorstep, I felt compelled to get involved with local grassroots  
organizers. Likewise, my research has not derived from some prior  
academic topical fascination, but instead from a genuine interest in  
the lives of ordinary people navigating a tainted, post-IBM economy  
and ecology.

...

For the entire article, see
http://www.aaanet.org/sections/ae/index.php/microelectronic-disaster- 
and-the-smarter-planet-paradox/

--

Lenny Siegel
Executive Director, Center for Public Environmental Oversight
a project of the Pacific Studies Center
278-A Hope Street, Mountain View, CA 94041
Voice: 650-961-8918 or 650-969-1545
Fax: 650-961-8918
<lsiegel@cpeo.org>
http://www.cpeo.org

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