Eight Books That Puncture the Myths of Silicon Valley

2 months ago 7

These are unusual times for Silicon Valley. “Tech” nary longer feels similar a discrete industry, oregon a clump of upstart companies successful Palo Alto riding the optimism of the Obama years. It’s the infrastructure underpinning astir each different industry. AI, unreality computing, logistics, finance, agriculture, retail, media: astir everything present runs done systems controlled by a fistful of megacorporations. Their bundle coordinates however we work, communicate, consume, and, increasingly, however we deliberation (nbd…).

That’s the cardinal paradox: nationalist resentment toward Big Tech has ne'er been greater, and the AI roar has lone widened the backlash. The technologies radical trust connected astir are besides the ones they spot least. For overmuch of my millennial moving life, companies similar Apple, Google, Amazon, and Meta were formed arsenic humanity’s champion anticipation alternatively than 1 of its biggest problems. Today, executives are hauled earlier Congress. Antitrust cases support piling up. Whistleblower memoirs person go planetary bestsellers. (Last summer, astatine the bookshop successful Paris’s Orly Airport, Careless People was 1 of lone 2 English-language books I could find—the different was Harry Potter.) And yet, due to the fact that these companies present underpin truthful overmuch of modern life, outrage has done remarkably small to loosen their grip. We’ve reached the constituent wherever AI products person go regular habits adjacent arsenic we’ve mislaid immoderate existent spot successful the corporations that made them.

I near Google—or possibly “was expelled” is the much close verb—in 2019, aft helping signifier the Google Walkout. Writing my memoir, Don’t Be Evil, sent maine searching for a broader mentation of however Silicon Valley became truthful powerful, truthful profoundly distrusted, and inactive truthful hard to meaningfully challenge. These are the books that astir shaped my knowing of the spot that has go the aerial we each breathe—and, increasingly, choke on.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture by Fred Turner

Fred Turner is my GOAT. No 1 has done much to explicate Silicon Valley’s founding mythology—or to amusement however the manufacture has rendered the worldly consequences of its powerfulness strangely invisible. Turner has pointed retired that Santa Clara County, the bosom of Silicon Valley, is among the astir polluted places successful America, portion astir a 4th of section families acquisition nutrient insecurity. Neither information squares with the paradise the Valley tells astir itself.

At the halfway of the publication is Stewart Brand, laminitis of the Whole Earth Catalog and a mythological fig successful Valley lore (immortalized by Steve Jobs’s “Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish” Stanford commencement address). Turner shows however Brand and his countercultural contemporaries transformed the machine from a awesome of subject bureaucracy into an emblem of idiosyncratic state and self-expression.

That motivation vocabulary became Silicon Valley’s autochthonal language: Google didn’t conscionable signifier information; it empowered people. Facebook didn’t harvest attention; it connected humanity. AI companies aren’t simply gathering products; they’re democratizing intelligence.

The genius and information of that worldview is that it recasts governmental problems arsenic engineering problems. Turner gave maine a model for knowing however a profoundly anti-institutional ethos took hold, 1 that treated antiauthoritarian institutions arsenic obstacles to beryllium bulldozed connected the mode to cyber-utopia.

The Age of Surveillance Capitalism by Shoshana Zuboff

Published successful precocious 2018—the precise infinitesimal the Andy Rubin ungraded broke and sparked the Google Walkout—this publication gave america connection for thing galore of america had sensed but couldn’t yet articulate.

Zuboff argued that Google’s existent innovation wasn’t hunt oregon advertizing but a caller economical logic: treating quality acquisition itself arsenic earthy worldly to beryllium extracted, predicted, and sold. Whether oregon not you bargain each portion of her thesis, it’s hard to overstate her influence. She changed the presumption of the debate. After Zuboff, it became overmuch harder to spot Google arsenic simply different palmy exertion institution alternatively than the designer of an wholly caller signifier of power—and capitalism.

Careless People by Sarah Wynn-Williams

Half the satellite has work this already, but it belongs connected the database anyway. (Bonus: a fewer acquainted characters rotation betwixt Wynn-Williams’s publication and mine—a reminder that Silicon Valley is simply a precise tiny world.)

Wynn-Williams had crazy, passenger-on-the-corporate-jet-level access, and she makes the astir of it. What emerges isn’t conscionable a representation of 1 dysfunctional company, but an relationship of what bonzer concentrations of powerfulness bash to the radical who wield them. Executives go insulated from mean life, surrounded by loyalists, rewarded for what-the-boss-wants-to-hear optimism, and progressively incapable to tolerate dissent. Decisions affecting billions are made by a remarkably tiny ellipse whose incentives drift ever further from the nationalist consequences of their choices. Institutional self-preservation trumps all.

What felt incredibly acquainted to me—and satisfying to spot named truthful clearly—is however her Meta resembles little a exertion institution than a governmental machine: obsessively managing narratives, disciplining interior dissent, and justifying assertive commercialized enlargement successful the connection of quality connection. It’s yet little a publication astir Facebook than astir what happens erstwhile immoderate instauration becomes truthful almighty that nary 1 wrong tin archer its leaders no.

Private Government by Elizabeth Anderson

A prof person of excavation (hi, Pete!) recommended this publication astir the clip of the Google Walkout, erstwhile I was opening to recognize that, arsenic righteous arsenic we felt demanding greater accountability from Google, the institution felt nary work to supply it. It’s a slim, riveting manifesto that permanently changed however I deliberation astir work.

Elizabeth Anderson asks a deceptively elemental question: Why bash we importune connected ideology successful nationalist beingness portion accepting authoritarian regularisation astatine work? Her reply is that corporations aren’t simply voluntary marketplace arrangements. They are backstage governments, exercising bonzer powerfulness implicit our speech, movements, relationships, and livelihoods with remarkably small antiauthoritarian oversight.

I thought astir Anderson often arsenic Google began changing its interior rules to restrict speech, subject organizing, and punish radical who spoke out—moves that felt similar abuses of powerfulness but offered small to nary recourse, contempt aggravated interior and nationalist outrage. Once you statesman seeing your leader arsenic a backstage authorities alternatively than simply a workplace, it becomes precise hard to unsee. The perils of a nine governed truthful extensively by corporations go intolerable to ignore.

Virtue Hoarders by Catherine Liu

Catherine Liu isn’t penning astir Silicon Valley per se, but fewer books helped maine recognize my years astatine Google more. Her taxable is the professional-managerial class: educated workers encouraged to transmission governmental vigor into symbolic virtuousness alternatively than structural questions of power, ownership, and class. It’s a almighty mentation for wherefore truthful galore elite institutions tin look progressive portion leaving their powerfulness structures untouched.

Google excelled astatine this. I worked successful marketing, producing campaigns for International Women’s Day, Black History Month, World Refugee Day, and YouTube’s endless “For Good” initiatives, spending tremendous budgets to broadcast the company’s values. Sometimes it felt arsenic though we were selling those values to ourselves. Yet the questions Liu insists substance astir remained mostly off-limits: who held power, who held equity, whose labour made the strategy possible, who bore its costs, and who yet made the decisions. Looking back, the Google Walkout feels similar a beautiful, astir guiltless interruption with that worldview—a infinitesimal erstwhile thousands of america inactive believed that if we appealed to the company’s stated ideals, it would take those ideals implicit its ain organization interests.

Virtue Hoarders helped maine spot however performances of virtuousness assistance support an instauration amassing ever much power, becoming much centralized, much managerial, and little accountable to its workers. If Fred Turner helped maine recognize however Silicon Valley built its mythology, Catherine Liu helped maine recognize wherefore truthful galore of america “PMC” were invested successful believing it—and wherefore breaking with that worldview felt little similar quitting a occupation than leaving a cult.

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener

The n+1 effort that yet became Uncanny Valley crossed my table portion I was inactive precise overmuch successful the tract astatine Google, and it dropped my jaw.

Wiener was the archetypal writer I’d encountered who captured the peculiar intelligence ambiance of Silicon Valley from the inside: the startup jargon, the escaped gourmet lunches, and the quasi-religious condemnation that everything from expanse euphony to the bushed method was ripe for “disruption.” She is an exquisite perceiver of the Valley’s astir absurd, alienating, and atomizing tendencies—and of however they accumulate into a genuine intelligence toll.

Reflecting connected the mundane frictions Silicon Valley promised to eliminate, she writes: “Warm laundry, radio, waiting for the bus…they made maine consciousness human.” She flips Silicon Valley’s cardinal premise: what the manufacture treats arsenic inefficiency, she recognizes arsenic the texture of being alive. It’s a quiescent but extremist proposition. Few books person truthful precisely diagnosed what it felt similar to unrecorded wrong the spell—or wherefore truthful galore of america yearn to interruption it.

Technofeudalism by Yanis Varoufakis

Written by Greece’s erstwhile concern minister, Technofeudalism argues that capitalism hasn’t simply go monopolistic; it has been supplanted by a full caller economical order.

Varoufakis’s cardinal assertion is that companies similar Google, Amazon, Meta, and Apple nary longer win chiefly by competing successful markets and producing goods, but by owning the integer infrastructure connected which everyone other depends. These platforms relation little similar accepted capitalist firms than feudal estates, extracting rent from businesses, creators, and users who person small prime but to run connected their terrain.

Reading Technofeudalism helped maine marque consciousness of the translation I witnessed firsthand astatine Google. The institution I joined sold search; the institution I near progressively governed the infrastructure done which billions of radical recovered information, communicated, worked, and now, with AI, think. My communicative is astir what it felt similar wrong that transition. Varoufakis explains the economical logic down it.

Empire of AI by Karen Hao

I came to Karen Hao’s riveting Empire of AI arsenic a latecomer. I’d near Google earlier AI swallowed Silicon Valley whole, and for years I had small involvement successful catching up with its caller formed of characters. Hao changed that.

While AI is sold arsenic humanity’s adjacent large leap forward, Hao shows that it rests connected the aforesaid foundations arsenic the past exertion boom: labour exploitation, assets extraction, and the attraction of firm power. AI doesn’t regenerate Silicon Valley’s concern model. It supercharges it.

I’ve been retired of my day-to-day tech beingness for rather a fewer years now, but the connection seems to person hardly changed. Companies racing to physique AI are simultaneously constructing the infrastructure that hospitals, schools, militaries, and governments progressively trust on, each portion wrapping themselves successful the aforesaid messianic rhetoric astir “benefiting humanity” that I heard each time astatine Google. The stakes are higher, but the ideology is remarkably unchanged.

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