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

Linkage Politics and Complex Governance in Transatlantic Surveillance – with Abraham Newman

August 31, 2018 with Abraham Newman World Politics 40
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman (2018), “Linkage Politics and Complex Governance in Transatlantic Surveillance,” World Politics 40, 4:515-554. Globalization blurs the traditional distinction between high and low politics, creating connections between previously discrete issue areas. An important existing literature focuses on how states may intentionally tie policy areas together to enhance cooperation. Building on recent ...
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Essay

Promoting Norms for Cyberspace

April 1, 2015 Council on Foreign Relations Cyber Brief
The United States defined its preferred cyberspace norms—Internet openness, security, liberty, free speech, and with minimal government oversight and surveillance—in its 2011 International Strategy for Cyberspace. Although the United States has had little success so far in establishing norms against commercial espionage in cyberspace, it has had some early gains with the recognition that international ...
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