Bill Gates during a deposition by the DOJ, 1998.

Whither the Nerd-Bully?

Bill Gates was the monopolistic father figure who Silicon Valley’s young founders rebelled against—and, in so rebelling, became.
Henry Ford poses next to a Model T

Muskism as Fordism

Similarities between Musk and Ford are not simply biographical: "they are about what kind of societies their versions of political economy produce—and require."
Painting of the Bay of San Francisco, by Eduard Hildebrandt.

Mark Twain, the Californian

In 1864 San Francisco, Twain found hardship, Bohemia, and his voice—transforming from local reporter to rising literary force.
Abacus, mathemeticians, and zeros and ones.

How Everything Became Data

The rise and rise and rise of data.
A Silicon Valley office building.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Two recent books illuminate the dark foundations of Silicon Valley.

How the Inventor of the First Chatbot Turned Against AI

Computer scientist Joseph Weizenbaum was there at the dawn of artificial intelligence– but he was also adamant that we must never confuse computers with humans.
Servers at a Facebook data center

Build a Better Internet

An interview with Ben Tarnoff, the author of "Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future."
Colorful bar graph.

‘Wallets and Eyeballs’: How eBay Turned the Internet Into a Marketplace

The story of the modern web is often told through the stories of Google, Facebook, Amazon. But eBay was the first conqueror.

The Internet Should Be a Public Good

The Internet was built by public institutions — so why is it controlled by private corporations?