Major funding for backstories provided by an anonymous donor, the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation.

From Virginia Humanities, this is Backstory.

Welcome to Backstory, the show that explains the history behind today's headlines. I'm Brian Ballot.

If you're new to the podcast, my colleagues Ed Ayers, Joanne Freeman, Nathan Connolly and myself are all historians and each week we explore the history of one topic that's been in the news.

This week we're bringing you a show that's a little different. We're going to play an interview about a slice of Northern California that's birthed one of the most influential industries in history.

I'm talking about Silicon Valley and Big Tech. It's no secret that technology and golf are daily lives. Think about this, I'll bet it sounds familiar.

You wake up, check your email on a laptop, download your favorite podcast on your iPhone, then listen to the episode while you scroll through social media.

This is all possible because of Silicon Valley.

But has the Valley grown too big and do some of its tech titans wield too much control?

Last month, Congress announced it's taking a closer look at some of the larger companies.

The House Judiciary Committee launched an investigation to see whether the tech world's big four.

That's Amazon, Apple, Facebook and Google are violating antitrust laws and stifling competition.

If you look at the antitrust law and you look at what the FTC is empowered to do, there is a real possibility that there could be significant changes of food in Silicon Valley.

That's Margaret O'Mara. She's a professor of history at the University of Washington. For years, she's researched Silicon Valley and unearthed its layered past in her new book called The Code, Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America.

Margaret says when it comes to regulating big tech, the old rules don't always apply.

If we have these antitrust laws on the books, why aren't we enforcing them?

It is tricky though because we have the Sherman Act. It's not 1890 anymore and industry is very different.

And tech is very different. In this question, the basic things that the Federal Trade Commission set up in the era of Woodrow Wilson

was designed to do was to protect consumers as was defined in the 19 teens.

The idea of consumer protection, how do you define that when Amazon can deliver something more quickly and cheaply than nearly any other retailer?

Is the consumer harmed? Well, maybe yes, I don't know. You need to think about different definitions. And so that's what lawmakers and regulators working with the tech industry and technologists are going to need to figure out.

As Capitol Hill grapples with the future of the Big Four, I wanted to understand how we got to where we are today with technology.

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