When I first discovered the Silicon Valley Tarot, it existed merely as an online tarot design, a webpage full of images and links to explanations and uses.  In fact, at first I thought it was a joke! because so much of the symbolism and images are funny.  However, it is a true tarot in just about every sense of the word.  The website that hosts the card designs became so popular that the deck was finally produced in card form to satisfy all the people who were demanding it be published.

The Silicon Valley Tarot features 70 cards instead of 78.  This is because within each suit, the numbered cards go from Ace through Eight instead of Ten.  This is in accordance with computer programming symbolism, based on an octal system which is at the heart of all computer work.  I won't profess to know a lot about computers, and so a lot of the references in this deck make a lot more sense to me when they're explained by people who deal in computer knowledge.  I have two brothers who are programmers and that helps.
 
The Major Arcana in this deck are entirely renamed in keeping with the computer language of the deck.  However, with some familiarity with traditional decks, the user will recognize most of the symbolism behind the new names.  The equivalents of Strength and Justice are shown in Rider-Waite ordering; Strength being 8 and Justice being 11.  Titles are as shown:
 
The Fool -- The Hacker
The Magician -- The Guru
The High Priestess -- The Futurist
The Empress -- The Garage
The Emperor -- The Mogul
The Hierophant -- The Consultant
The Lovers -- IPO
The Chariot -- El Camino Real
Strength -- Double Latte
The Hermit -- Encryption
The Wheel of Fortune -- The Server
Justice -- The Sysadmin
The Hanged Man -- The Hive
Death -- The Layoff
Temperance -- Flame War
The Devil -- Spam
The Tower -- Firewall
The Star -- Stock Options
The Moon -- Venture Capital
The Sun -- Next Big Thing
Judgment -- Bugs
The World -- The Net
 
The cards are rendered in black with the image centered on them, in full color.  Titles appear in crudish "typed text" look in the border underneath the image.  In addition, the Arabic numeral for the card is in the upper left hand corner.  The Fool is unnumbered.  My favorite thing is that in the upper right hand corner, the number for the card is rendered in its binary form.  I thought that was a really good touch.
 
The Minor Arcana have some very interesting variances also.  Suits are Disks (as in cdroms), Cubicles, Hosts and Networks.  As stated previously, the numbered cards run from Ace through Eight instead of Ten.  The numbered cards are somewhere between pips and scenes.  They are basically arranged numbers of the suit items, but they have some interesting touches which add to the meaning.  Court cards are Nerd (in place of Page), Marketeer, Salesman, and CIO (Chief Information Officer).  All four of the Nerds are the same with slightly different coloring (and with the different suit item in each card) and this is also true of all the Marketeers, all the Salesmen, and all the CIO's.  I'm sure this cut down on production time considerably.
 
The cards themselves are standard sized and shuffle and handle easily.  Printed on a thin flexible card stock, they are coated with a satin finish protective layer.  The back design is among the best I have seen; it is an olive green on black circuit board design, which is the same on both ends so it can be reversible.  The deck does use reversals.  The little white booklet which comes with the deck is very good, especially considering it has to explain a whole new system of tarot.  A lot of the approach in the booklet is for those who are new to tarot, I like this because it doesn't assume one knows anything, it just goes ahead and explains it.  And it's written in very down-to-earth language.  Most of the stuff which goes over my head, I can learn from this booklet.  Two cards at the end of the deck contain rules and information for playing a game called "Ram" using the deck.
 
Overall, I recommend this tarot deck for anyone who is interested in computers, or is involved in high-tech business, or who collects tarot.  It's the kind of deck that will be more interesting to someone who understands what the background it comes from is all about.  I can grasp some of it, but I know that my brothers understand it a lot better...... however, it's an excellent deck!
 
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also see:
The Silicon Valley Tarot
 
Review Copyright 1999 by Gina M. Pace
 
Silicon Valley Tarot by Thomas Scoville, 1998
published by Steve Jackson Games, Inc.  ISBN 1-55634-362-0