Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech
industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must
reclaim technology’s potential for the public good.
Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What’s
not to love about Silicon Valley?
These days, it’s
hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs
ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of
revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace
conditions of Amazon warehouse workers or Uber. We’re starting to
see the cracks in the edifice, as we realise that the wealth that the
tech industry is so good at creating is neither sustainable nor
always desirable.
Abolish Silicon
Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful
inequality and unsubstantiated lies of Silicon Valley, and a rallying
call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status
quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and
companies that characterise the industry today, Liu delves into the
structural factors of the economy that led to Silicon Valley in its
current form, and links them to the economy at large. Ultimately, she
proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where
innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not
merely to enrich a select few.