Adam Fisher

Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation. So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius... Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, VALLEY OF GENIUS takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. The book interweaves stories of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. These are the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.

Since founding his studio fuseproject in 1999, Yves Behar has redefined the role of the designer, expanding his work to encompass client commissions alongside public-sector work and entrepreneurial engagements. In doing so, Behar has produced groundbreaking, award-winning designs that have had a positive impact on the well-being of people in developing countries and impoverished communities, creating everything from laptops and spectacles for children to stylish electronics. His clients have included MIT Media Lab, BMW, Microsoft, Swarovski and many more. A comprehensive retrospective of Behar's twenty-year career, this book presents his work in topical thematic chapters - 'Reducing', 'Sensing', 'Transforming', 'Giving', 'Humanizing' and 'Scaling' - and explores over sixty projects in detail, through text descriptions, sketches and exquisite studio photography. Offering thorough and sometimes personal insights into the conception, process and production of some of the most recognized pieces of contemporary design, this monograph illuminates the designer's particular fusion of creativity and commercial savvy, as well as his studio's expertise in combining the latest Silicon Valley technologies with social responsibility and business acumen. With 730 illustrations in colour