A People's History of Silicon Valley

by Keith A. Spencer

Regardless of where you live or work, Silicon Valley undoubtedly touches your life; indeed, the tech industry’s ubiquitous gadgets promise us more efficiency, convenience and fun. Yet despite Silicon Valley’s utopian promise, more and more of us find ourselves addicted to our smartphones, made insecure by social media, and alarmed at how tech companies profit off our personal data.
And while Silicon Valley’s CEOs are often viewed as visionary prophets, their companies’ policies have sown social discord around the world, led to mass evictions in the Bay Area, and perhaps enabled far-right nationalist parties in the Western World.

A People’s History of Silicon Valley follows the history of the people exploited, displaced, and made obsolete by the tech industry, from the colonization of the Bay Area to the present day. From the first Macintosh to the rise of social media,A People’s History of Silicon Valley peels back the curtain on an industry that brands itself as visionary yet which may be chipping away at the foundations of society, including our democratic institutions.

Keith A. Spencer is a San Francisco-based writer, artist and commentator. He is currently an editor at Salon.com, where he manages science and tech coverage, and previously served as editor-in-chief of the Bay Area culture magazine The Bold Italic.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Technology, Politics, Journalism

200 pages, Paperback

Published November 1, 2018

About the author

Keith A. Spencer is the cover editor for Salon, and manages Salon's science, tech and health coverage. His book, "A People's History of Silicon Valley: How the Tech Industry Exploits Workers, Erodes Privacy and Undermines Democracy," was released in 2018 from Eyewear Publishing.

Reviews

[Wendy Liu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Very quick read. A good overview of Silicon Valley criticism that has emerged over the last few years, aimed at a general audience.

[Amelia Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deeply informative, very readable, incredibly depressing. As relevant now as it was eight years ago (perhaps even more so)

[jasmine sun · Rating 3 out of 5]

one-hour read, mostly skimmed.
a concise overview of various ethical/social challenges the SV tech industry has faced beyond the usual discourse of diversity & inclusion. i was pleasantly surprised to see the REM mining bit, but wish there was more—i rarely see global context provided in these kinds of stories.
best for people with little to no prior context; maybe an intro curriculum to create some common reference points. really accessible read. not much novel research, mostly a review of other journalism and academic work, and doesn’t really dive in depth or provides multiple possible “why”s in its historiography.

[Dana Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

There's a lot of good ideas and information presented here and I really wanted to like this book more, but some of the things presented are so hilariously incorrect that it makes it difficult to trust the rest of the book. As an example, claiming that Turing machines were actually constructed and used to break Nazi codes during WWII is so egregiously boneheaded and wrong that it makes me wonder if the book even had an editor at all. Still, a lot of the things presented here are worth thinking about and the author does a good job at citing his sources so you can read the original material.

[Ashley · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a must read for folks who were born and raised in the Silicon Valley / Bay Area.

[Bharanidharan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Most interesting timeline of events on single landscape

A very interesting book shows very deep insights on the sillicon valley.

Inspired to write Indian version of the book

[Pubert · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

Woof. It's giving performative. I'll bet this author is super short.

[Nick S · Rating 0.25 out of 5]

Dungeon Crawler Carl makes the same point but better...