Palo Alto
"In Palo Alto, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the 'tragedy of the commons, ' racial genetics, and 'broken windows' theory. The Internet and computers, too. It's a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century"
Stats for nerds
12recommend
24mentions
17people
2023–2026years
71% recommend25% neutral4% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Palo Alto by Malcom Harris goes even further back to the 1800s to explain the origin of Silicon Valley.
https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/malcolm-harris/palo...
- Palo Alto by Malcolm Harris - a re-read about the history of Silicon Valley, highly recommended.
- Malcolm Harris' book Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World goes into surprising depth on the history of the California Genocide[0] in the first few chapters. It's a very well-researched work
- > prose and an expository essay -it was doing both.
Putting prose in an essay means there are more valid criticisms of a piece of writing, not fewer. If somebody is breakdancing and reciting the periodic table at the same time it’s ok if somebody notices if they skipped the lanthanides and actinides.
I’m a fan of blending the two! It’s just really really hard to do both well at the same time. My most recent example is Malcolm Harris’ history of Palo Alto, it is incredibly well-done.
- Great book: Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World by Malcolm Harris (2023)
- You should check out the book Palo Alto if you haven't. Malcom Harris should write an epilogue of this era in tech history.
You'd probably like how the book's author structures his thesis to what the "Palo Alto" system is.
Feels like OpenAI + friends, and the equivalent government take overs by Musk + goons, have more in common than you might think. It's also nothing new either, some story of this variant has been coming out of California for a good 200+ years now.
You write in a similar manner as the author.
