The silence of silicon lambs: speaking out health and environmental impacts within Taiwan's Hsinchu Science-based industrial park
Journal
2004 IEEE International Symposium on Electronics and the Environment
Pages
258-263
Date Issued
2004
Author(s)
Abstract
The high technology emergence in the 1980s coupled with the economic boom of the 1990s, have led to the rapid rise of Information Technology (IT) industries located on both sides of the Pacific Rim. In Taiwan, Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park (HSIP, the so-called "Eastern Silicon Valley") provided entrepreneurs with the low cost physical infrastructure, equally low cost labor and poor environmental regulatory implementation that led to profitable production and world-wide marketing high-tech products. But while investors, managers and researchers who worked within HSIP profited from the enormous growth of the high-tech sector, members of their labor force and local residents suffered. This paper investigates how local residents and hightech employees have suffered from the environmental impacts and health risks of IT industry; how those related policies have failed to deal with the social and environmental consequences of IT industry. It argues that the economic and the consequential political success of the HSIP has cultivated a unique "information technology dominance" (IT dominance) climate that has overridden the environmental and health concern within Taiwanese society (Abstract).
Subjects
Business; Component: policy; Environmental impact, public health; Global networking; High-tech transfornation; Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park; IT dominance; Local government; Pullution; Regulation; Silicon Valley; State
Other Subjects
Global networking; High-tech transformation; Hsinchu Science-based Industrial Park; Silicon valley; Computer software; Electric lamps; Environmental impact; Health; Information technology; Laws and legislation; Pollution; Public policy; Risk assessment; Toxic materials; Silicon
Type
conference paper