Silicon Valley, disruption, and the end of uncertainty

Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want

Did the tech industry get high on its own supply?

‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley

The industry’s liberal reputation is misleading. Its reactionary tendencies – celebrating wealth, power and traditional masculinity – have been clear since the dotcom mania of the 1990s

Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass

The people building A.I. fear that we have only a short time before advanced A.I. disrupts the labor force.

With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial.

The backlash against data centers is difficult to understand if your salary depends on your not understanding it.

‘If we don’t fight back, we don’t have a future’: the journalist taking on the ‘tech fascists’ of Silicon Valley

As Elon Musk, Peter Thiel and their peers have grown richer and more influential, Gil Durán argues they have all but abandoned democracy – and found the perfect government to enable them

A Thesis on the History of the 21st Century: Technocracy, AI, and the End of the World

Reviewing a trio of books by a sextet of ruling-class ideologues, Mathias Fuelling finds an ambient anxiety hanging over a perceived crisis in American capitalism, with visions of bolstering a Silicon Valley-led technocracy fueled by AI investment reflecting American fears over the dawn of a "Chinese Century."

Building tech in the world’s secret R&D hub

Zurich has created a technology ecosystem nearing the density of Silicon Valley.

Hype, financial narratives, and self-fulfilling prophecies in surveillance capitalism

The rise of platforms has transformed our understanding of contemporary capitalism, with the critical literature describing how these firms leverage unprecedented digital powers to extract monopoly rents – perhaps even heralding a new form of Feudalism. This paper draws on the literature on financial narratives to examine the role that such stories play within the form of capitalism that they describe, and what this suggests for the role of “hype” in contemporary capitalism. The same stories that for critical scholars appear as menacing threats of “technofeudalism” or “surveillance capitalism” for investors appear as optimistic stories of promising future returns. By driving financial investments, narratives afford platforms very real social and political powers, enabling them to function as a form of self-fulfilling prophecies. The paper argues for a cultural inflection to the political economy of Big Tech – viewing capitalism as neither mechanistic nor rational, but as an expression of a complex interplay between narrative, technology, and economic power. This suggests the need for a critical hype studies, geared at deconstructing the narratives undergirding the technological waves of capitalist pursuits, and examining the broader role of hype in coordinating and directing flows of capital within contemporary financialized capitalism.

The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story

In the weird glow of the dying millennium, Michael Lewi…

More Everything Forever

This "smart and wonderfully readable" (New York Times) exposé shows why Silicon Valley’s heartless, baseless, and foolish obsessions—with escaping death...

Who Asked For This? - Cal Newport

Last week, Elizabeth Lopatto published an insightful article in The Verge. It boasted an intriguing title: ​“Silicon Valley has forgotten what normal people want.”​ “Within ... Read more

Opinion | Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass - The …

archived 30 Apr 2026 15:40:29 UTC

The Nerd Reich

The Extremist Tech Authoritarian Politics of Silicon Valley

It’s Time to Save Silicon Valley From Itself

Big Tech has lost its way. At WIRED’s Big Interview event, Techdirt editor Mike Masnick and Common Tools CEO Alex Komoroske announced a manifesto designed to help the industry get back on track.