Henry Farrell

Silicon Valley’s Reading List Reveals Its Political Ambitions

In 2008, Paul Graham mused about the cultural differences between great US cities. Three years earlier, Graham had co-founded Y Combinator, a “startup accelerator” that would come to epitomize Silicon Valley — and would move there in 2009. But at the time Graham was based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which, as he saw it, sent a different message to its inhabitants than did Palo Alto.

Cambridge’s message was, “You should be smarter. You really should get around to reading all those books you’ve been meaning to.” Silicon Valley respected smarts, Graham wrote, but its message was different: “You should be more powerful.”

Read the full article in Bloomberg Weekend.

Other Writing:

Essay

Democracy’s Dilemma – with Bruce Schneier

May 14, 2019 Boston Review Democracy Science and Technology
How can democratic societies protect—and protect themselves from—the free flow of digital information? The Internet was going to set us all free. At least, that is what U.S. policy makers, pundits, and scholars believed in the 2000s.  The Internet would undermine authoritarian rulers by reducing the government’s stranglehold on debate, helping oppressed people realize how ...
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Chapter in an Edited Volume

“Privacy in the Digital Age: States, Private Actors and Hybrid Arrangements,” in Governing Global Electronic Networks: International Perspectives on Power and Policy – eds. William Drake and Ernest Wilson

December 5, 2008 eds. William Drake and Ernest Wilson The MIT Press: 2008
Privacy has emerged as a key regulatory issue in the wake of the information and communications revolution. New technologies have brought new problems; they have made it more difficult for individuals to maintain their privacy (or for other actors to protect it on their behalf), while also giving rise to complex issues of global regulation. ...
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