Just how do you turn sand, which you can find everywhere on a beach, into a trillion dollars?  How could you turn sand into almost anything you can imagine (Apple products, Wii sets, flat screen TV, handheld music players) as well as the once unimaginable (Facebook, Ebay, MSN).  Why do tech products get better and cheaper at the same time?  How do these products, conjured out of sand like magic, affect the way we live today especially how we relate to one another?  How can high-tech wastes and bi-products destroy communities and what can be done from legislation?  These questions will be addressed in this course.  What these questions have in common is one word: Silicon.  Not fiction or myth; it is based on a true story (including the Valley).  Never again will you look at the world of high tech fever in the same way.