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Silicon Valley



  • O'Mara: Politics and Commercial Pressure, not ChatGPT, are the Threats

    Historian of technology and Silicon Valley Margaret O'Mara says that the peril of artificial intelligence chatbots and artificial intellience will lie in how it is marketed; the rush to be first to the market creates conditions for sloppy tech and abusive applications. 



  • Can Silicon Valley Be Redeemed? (Review Essay)

    by Margaret O'Mara

    Three books collectively demand a reckoning with Silicon Valley's immense social power; tech executives would do well to listen, says a technology historian. 



  • The Last Days of the Tech Emperors?

    by Margaret O'Mara

    The mood of Congressional questioning of tech executives recalled the traffic safety debates of the mid-1960s that helped catalyze significantly more regulation for the auto industry.



  • The Coronavirus Could Rewrite the Rules for Silicon Valley

    by Margaret O'Mara

    The blue-collar workers who power the digital economy — including fulfillment center workers and app-based couriers — are pushing for higher pay and better protection, just as Detroit autoworkers did 90 years ago.



  • ‘The Code’ Review: How Green Was the Valley

    by Randall Stross

    As late as the early 1970s, Northern California seemed a long-shot candidate for the center of the computerized universe. A review of Margaret O’Mara's The Code. 

  • San Francisco™, Brought to You By Google

    by Rebecca Solnit

    Credit: Wiki Commons/HNN staff.Originally posted on TomDispatch.com Finally, journalists have started criticizing in earnest the leviathans of Silicon Valley, notably Google, now the world’s third-largest company in market value. The new round of discussion began even before the revelations that the tech giants were routinely sharing our data with the National Security Agency, or maybe merging with it. Simultaneously another set of journalists, apparently unaware that the weather has changed, is still sneering at San Francisco, my hometown, for not lying down and loving Silicon Valley’s looming presence.