All of which makes it even more remarkable that last week the paper ran a stunning two-day expose of the dark underbelly of the Californian economic miracle. In a marvellous piece of investigative journalism on ``High Tech Hidden Labor'' (www.mercurycenter.com /svtech/ news/special/piecework/), the Mercury reported that workers, many of them Vietnamese immigrants, are paid by the piece to build electronic parts at home for major local companies, in apparent violation of labour, tax and safety laws.

It claimed that at least a dozen local electronics manufacturers, from small firms to multi-billion-dollar giants, have been involved in piecework in the past year.

Reporters Miranda Ewell and K. Oanh Hafollowed the trail from Vietnamese immigrants who work in family groups, often with children, to electronics contract manufacturers for whom they work.

One prominent Internet company claimed to have a policy that assembly work should only be done in certified facilities -- even though the reporters spoke to one person who had a work order from that company for building connectors and circuit boards at home.

Like the New York sweatshops at the turn of the century, these assembly joints employ immigrants who speak little English and don't understand minimum wage and workplace safety laws. The report uncovered kids helping parents work at home, of pieceworkers soldering components with acidic flux, suffering from repetitive stress syndrome and working in conditions that would make the Health and Safety Executive faint.

The report was interesting, above all, because of its implicit reminder that behind every fortune there probably lies a crime. This is news to the mainstream media, which has for decadesgiven the computer industry an easy ride. It pumps out products which are chronically unreliable, yet provides customers with little support and no redress. Imagine the fuss there would be if Ford sold cars which crashed every day or so. But I have yet to use a Windows machine which ran for 48 hours without falling over.

And the strange thing is that most customers feel that the product's unreliability is somehow their fault! Instead of entertaining healthy fantasies of strangling Bill Gates, they feel inadequate. It's weird. But so is the widespread illusion that information technology has no downside, that it's a uniquely non-polluting, empowering, meritocratic, modernising, life-enhancing force.

The truth is, of course, more complex.

It is a relatively ``clean'' industry - but it also produces serious environmental pollution and needs unconscionable amounts of water. It enables us to do wonderful things - but also polarises society into those who are wired and those who are not. It creates ``virtualcommunities'' while wiping out industries which once supported real ones. And the gadgets it sells are often assembled not by hi-tech robots, but by sweated labour such as that uncovered by the Mercury in the Valley's back yard.

--The Observer News Service