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.

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April 20, 2025 Democracy Journal
What happens to politics when the voice of the people blurs together with the voices of self-appointed god-emperors like Elon Musk? We are about to find out. More at Democracy Journal.
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“The Political Economy of the Internet and E-Commerce,” in Political Economy and the Changing Global Order (third edition) – eds. Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill

September 1, 2005 eds. Richard Stubbs and Geoffrey R.D. Underhill Oxford: 2005
How have new information technologies affected international political economy? In the heady years of the dot com bubble, many academics and commentators predicted that the Internet and e-commerce would empower private actors and weaken states. Indeed, some libertarians hoped that the Internet would lead to a collapse in state authority. However, these predictions have not ...
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