The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball

by Noam Cohen

Overview

Included in Backchannel’s (WIRED.com) “Top Tech Books of 2017”

An “important” book on the “pervasive influence of Silicon Valley on our economy, culture and politics.”
—New York Times

How the titans of tech's embrace of economic disruption and a rampant libertarian ideology is fracturing America and making it a meaner place

In The Know-It-Alls former New York Times technology columnist Noam Cohen chronicles the rise of Silicon Valley as a political and intellectual force in American life. Beginning nearly a century ago and showcasing the role of Stanford Universityas the incubator of this new class of super geeks, Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet.

Donald Trump’s election victory was an inadvertent triumph of the "disruption" that Silicon Valley has been pushing: Facebook and Twitter, eager to entertain their users, turned a blind eye to the fake news and the hateful ideas proliferating there. The Rust Belt states that shifted to Trump are the ones being left behind by a "meritocratic" Silicon Valley ideology that promotes an economy where, in the words of LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman, each of us is our own start-up. A society that belittles civility, empathy, and collaboration can easily be led astray. The Know-It-Alls explains how these self-proclaimed geniuses failed this most important test of democracy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781620972106
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	11/07/2017
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.30(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Noam Cohen covered the influence of the Internet on the larger culture for the New York Times, where he wrote the Link by Link column, beginning in 2007. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. This is his first book.

Table of Contents

Introduction: "To Serve Alan" 1

1 John McCarthy: "Solving today's problems tomorrow" 17

2 Frederick Terman: "Stanford can be a dominating factor in the West" 47

3 Bill Gates: "Most of you steal your software" 69

4 Marc Andreessen: "By the power vested in me by no one in particular" 77

5 Jeff Bezos: "When it's tough, will you give up, or will you be relentless?" 101

6 Sergey Brin and Larry Page: "It was like, wow, maybe we really should start a company now" 113

7 Peter Thiel: "Monopolists lie to protect themselves" 137

8 Reid Hoffman et al.: "My membership in a notable corporate alumni group in Silicon Valley has opened the door…" 161

9 Jimmy Wales: "Wikipedia is something special" 169

10 Mark Zuckerberg: "Nerds win" 177

The Future: "Local, small-scale, active" 201

A Note to the Reader 209

Acknowledgments 211

Notes 215

Index 247

Editorial Reviews

10/16/2017
Arrogant tech moguls are making the world into a hypercompetitive, misogynistic free-market hellhole argues this scattershot jeremiad. New York Times tech columnist Cohen profiles computer and internet pioneers including Stanford provost Frederick Terman, whose program for commercializing projects from the university’s computer-science department spawned Silicon Valley, and Valley icons such as Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page. Cohen’s caustic profiles attack these men for promoting a masculinist hacker culture that celebrates maverick entrepreneurs and unfettered markets while disparaging government regulation and social solidarity. Cohen’s critique is weak on specifics and is seldom telling. PayPal founder and Trump endorser Peter Thiel is the only libertarian ideologue here; the rest are tarred mainly for making money and thus sullying the web’s potential for noncommercial participatory creativity, as exemplified by Wikipedia. Even generous initiatives, such as Facebook chief Mark Zuckerberg’s offer of free (though limited) internet service in India, strike the author as sinister power grabs: “Zuckerberg was conceiving a new online civilization before our eyes.” Cohen’s undiscriminating, ham-fisted polemic is provocative but overblown. (Nov.)

Publishers Weekly

Praise for The Know-It-Alls:
Included in Backchannel’s (WIRED.com) “Top Tech Books of 2017”

An “important” book on the “pervasive influence of Silicon Valley on our economy, culture and politics.”
—New York Times

“A valuable addition to the growing body of literature that’s trying to explain how a culture of under-socialized wunderkind CEOs drove tech’s future into a ditch.”
—Backchannel (WIRED.com)

“An unabashed critique of the values of Silicon Valley start-ups that increasingly control our lives online.”
—Library Journal

“The Know-It-Alls examines highly influential figures such as the often-neglected computer pioneers John McCarthy and Frederick Terman, who helped to transform Stanford, California, and its valley into a digital powerhouse — McCarthy as the father of artificial intelligence, Terman as a catalyst for local entrepreneurialism. These finely researched portraits are a joy.”
—Nature Magazine

“[Cohen] shows how the cult of personality for tech entrepreneurs developed out of a ‘combination of a hacker’s arrogance and an entrepreneur’s greed’ and . . . helps chip away at the power these men (another crucial quality) have carved out for themselves. . . . An enlightening breakdown of how Silicon Valley billionaires have shifted popular discourse in their favor.”
—Kirkus Reviews

“Individualism is a big part of what makes America great—until it becomes a euphemism for selfishness and arrogance among lucky winners who prefer to believe that luck and other people had nothing to do with their success. The Know-It-Alls is a terrific case study of some of the unreckoned costs of the digital revolution, and how one piece of the American idea threatens to overwhelm the others.”
—Kurt Andersen, author of Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire and host of NPR's Studio 360

“Why is the Internet the way it is? How has commerce come to dominate the scramble for clicks and eyeballs? What kind of people, essentially all of them young men—brainy, ambitious, focused, very young young men—created cyberspace? Via the careers of a dozen of them, Noam Cohen tells the story in this entertaining, refreshingly unworshipful survey.”
—Hendrik Hertzberg, author of Politics: Observations & Arguments and ¡Obamanos!

“A fascinating intellectual profile of the people who have increasingly come to rule our world. With precision and skill, Noam Cohen tweaks the pretensions of a handful of tech oligarchs, whose self-styled project to better our lives results in little more than a power grab at our economy and our democracy. . . . I'll be turning to Cohen's insights into the profiteers responsible again and again.”
—David Dayen, author of Chain of Title

“A provocative and illuminating examination of Silicon Valley. Using profiles of its core digital capitalist giants and the immense political, economic and cultural power they have quickly come to possess, Cohen raises troubling questions about how this can possibly square with a fair, decent, humane, and democratic society. This immensely readable book should be mandatory reading.”
—Robert W. McChesney, author of Digital Disconnect

From the Publisher

11/01/2017
Cohen (columnist, New York Times) laments that the collective and open Internet of a previous generation has today become a commercialized and market-driven enterprise controlled by a few powerful companies who exploit users both for content and as advertising targets. He places the majority of the blame on the technology-transferred offshoots of Stanford University that built the symbiotic relationship with Silicon Valley and its venture capitalist culture next door. Companies founded or funded by libertarian Stanford graduates (or dropouts) promise a technoutopia through the democratization of computing without government regulation but in practice prioritize scalability and market forces to the detriment of liberties such as privacy. Each chapter tells this history through the lens of a single man (yes, all men) whom Cohen characterizes as either hacker-geniuses wooed against their principles into commercialization or entrepreneurial sharks seeking disruptive technologies to commercialize, with PayPal's Peter Thiel receiving the most ire. Most disappointing is a lack of concrete steps toward an alternate, more diverse, and collaborative future. VERDICT This unabashed critique of the values of Silicon Valley start-ups that increasingly control our lives online will find its audience among socially conscious tech consumers.—Wade M. Lee, Univ. of Toledo Lib.

Library Journal

2017-09-04
A study of Silicon Valley technology titans and how their narratives of success have influenced political, social, and economic discourse.In a fairly short period of time, roughly 25 years since the internet became accessible to private development, the libertarian-leaning belief system of Silicon Valley has practically become dogma. As former New York Times tech columnist Cohen pointedly shows in his character studies, the clout of tech superstars, the so-called know-it-alls, is based on their winner-take-all vision of society, a meritocratic fantasy that conflates their enormous wealth with individual greatness. Aside from their libertarian narrative of success, a chief principle of their belief is disruption. The concept has become so ingrained in contemporary culture that it has even infected politics, giving rise to outsider politicians such as Donald Trump, whom PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel openly endorsed. The goal of disruption is a conceited effort to upset the status quo, or established order, regardless of how successful or popular it may be. It might be tempting to characterize Cohen as a Luddite with an ax to grind, but he shows how the cult of personality for tech entrepreneurs developed out of a "combination of a hacker's arrogance and an entrepreneur's greed" and they have selfishly exploited technological advances for personal gain. Beginning with researcher and early artificial intelligence advocate John McCarthy, the author devotes each chapter to a specific CEO or mega-investor—including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Amazon's Jeff Bezos, and Google's Sergey Brin and Larry Page—and takes aim at the toxic mythmaking that legitimizes the often underhanded business practices, questionable ethics, and self-aggrandizement. By exposing the fragile veneer of their exorbitant wealth, Cohen helps chip away at the power these men (another crucial quality) have carved out for themselves. An enlightening breakdown of how Silicon Valley billionaires have shifted popular discourse in their favor.

Kirkus Reviews