Silicon Valley 
-
SOURCE: Washington Post
3/12/2023
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.
-
SOURCE: The Drift
Silicon Valley Was and Is The Child of the Military-Industrial Complex
by Jeannette Estruth
"The technology sector attributes its economic power to its own creativity and rogue innovation, but throughout its history it has been dependent on the federal budget."
-
SOURCE: Foreign Affairs
11/1/2022
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.
-
SOURCE: The Nation
6/13/2022
Reviewed: The Bio of Hippie Capitalism Pioneer and Technofuturist Stewart Brand
by Malcolm Harris
From LSD to the computer revolution, Stewart Brand appeared in some way in the biggest cultural trends to emerge from California in the late 20th century. A new authorized biography tells a version of his story, but is it the whole story?
-
SOURCE: The Guardian
8/30/2021
"Selling a Promise": What Did Silicon Valley Learn from Theranos?
Tech historian Margaret O'Mara offers insight on the culture of Silicon Valley and the safeguards against hype and fraud as Theranos founder Elizabeth Holmes goes on trial.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
7/30/2020
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.
-
SOURCE: New York Times
4/30/2020
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.
-
11/24/19
Investigating Technology and the Remaking of America
by Robin Lindley
A conversation with Acclaimed History Professor Margaret O’Mara on Her Career and Her Groundbreaking New Book on Silicon Valley
-
SOURCE: Wall Street Journal
7/15/19
‘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.
-
SOURCE: NYT
11-9-18
The futurist philosopher Yuval Noah Harari thinks Silicon Valley is an engine of dystopian ruin.
So why do the digital elite adore him so?
-
SOURCE: Slate
11-1-18
It was Silicon Valley that turned Yuval Noah Harari into a celebrity historian
Why did geeks embrace him?
-
SOURCE: GeekWire
12-16-13
Tech historian to Silicon Valley wannabes: Think different
Leslie Berlin: Creating a carbon copy of Silicon Valley isn't feasible.
-
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.
News
- Josh Hawley Earns F in Early American History
- Does Germany's Holocaust Education Give Cover to Nativism?
- "Car Brain" Has Long Normalized Carnage on the Roads
- Hawley's Use of Fake Patrick Henry Quote a Revealing Error
- Health Researchers Show Segregation 100 Years Ago Harmed Black Health, and Effects Continue Today
- Nelson Lichtenstein on a Half Century of Labor History
- Can America Handle a 250th Anniversary?
- New Research Shows British Industrialization Drew Ironworking Methods from Colonized and Enslaved Jamaicans
- The American Revolution Remains a Hotly Contested Symbolic Field
- Untangling Fact and Fiction in the Story of a Nazi-Era Brothel