As automation reduces the need for human labor, some Silicon Valley executives think a universal income will be the answer — and the beta test is happening in Kenya.
silicon valley
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
‘Silicon Valley’ Masterfully Skewers Tech Culture
At The New Yorker, Andrew Marantz takes us behind-the-scenes at the HBO comedy “Silicon Valley,” revealing how its writers and creators are so good at accurately skewering the tech world.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
How Homelessness Looks in the Tech Boom
In the New Republic, Monica Potts profiles an elderly couple who lived in their van while searching for affordable housing, and portrays the hostilities and NIMBYism that Silicon Valley’s homeless face, as well as the social services available to them.
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
Cashing In On Tech’s Spiritual Awakening
Maybe it’s no surprise, then, that many tech workers in San Francisco turn to psychics for a glimpse of the future. Or that psychics, in turn, are rebranding themselves as spiritual therapists, executive coaches, and corporate counselors. The trend is common enough to be spoofed on HBO’s Silicon Valley, where the show’s fictional tech CEO confers […]
Posted inBooks, Nonfiction, Quotes
The Man Behind Moore’s Law
IBM has announced that it has made the world’s most powerful computer chip. The breakthrough “could lead to a 50% performance and power boost over chips that are on the market today, effectively keeping Moore’s Law more or less intact for the time being,” Quartz reported. This Scientific American excerpt of the biography Moore’s Law: […]
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Netscape, 20 Years Later
Chris Wilson: I still remember the very first time I got HTML content pulled over the network through Libwww and I was displaying it on my debugging monitor in my office at NCSA with Jon Mittelhauser sitting over my shoulder looking at it, and thinking that was amazing. I knew that it was going to […]
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction, Uncategorized
The Creeping Tech Angst in Silicon Valley: Our College Pick
Yiren Lu, a recent Harvard grad who now studies computer science at Columbia, takes a step back from the startup world to wonder what it means for our tech infrastructure when all the bright young things want to make apps but aren’t skilled in networks and hardware — the stuff that makes the Internet go. […]
Posted inCollege, Nonfiction, Uncategorized
The Creeping Tech Angst in Silicon Valley: Our College Pick
Yiren Lu, a recent Harvard grad who now studies computer science at Columbia, takes a step back from the startup world to wonder what it means for our tech infrastructure when all the bright young things want to make apps but aren’t skilled in networks and hardware — the stuff that makes the Internet go. […]
Posted inNonfiction, Quotes
What Silicon Valley Is Really Selling Us
Wired senior editor Bill Wasik on the public’s changing relationship with both Silicon Valley and the technology it creates and promotes: One of the most toxic memes to waft out of the industry recently has been the idea of quasi-secession, whether it was Peter Thiel’s dream of floating hacker communities or Tim Draper’s plan to make Silicon […]
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Longreads Member Pick: The Offline Wage Wars of Silicon Valley
For this week’s Longreads Member Pick, we’re excited to share a story from Next City’s Forefront magazine, by journalist Nona Willis Aronowitz. Aronowitz looks at the story behind the minimum wage increase in San Jose, which jumped to $10 per hour from $8 per hour after the city’s residents voted for the increase last November—”the […]