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:

Academic Article

“Conclusions,” in West European Politics – with Adrienne Hèritier

March 15, 2007 EU West European Politics 30 with Adrienne Hèritier
The articles in this volume provide evidence supporting the claim that organisational actors within the EU do engage in contestation over competences over a wide variety of legislative and policy-making procedures. Far from defining EU politics, treaty texts are only their beginning. The articles also provide evidence that informal changes may be translated into treaty ...
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Essay

AI’s Big Rift is Like a Religious Schism

December 12, 2023 The Economist
TWO CENTURIES ago Henri de Saint-Simon, a French utopian, proposed a new religion, worshipping the godlike force of progress, with Isaac Newton as its chief saint. He believed that humanity’s sole uniting interest, “the progress of the sciences”, should be directed by the “elect of humanity”, a 21-member “Council of Newton”. Friedrich Hayek, a 20th-century ...
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