A People's History of Silicon Valley with Keith A. Spencer
Upstream
Upstream
4.9 • 2.1K Ratings
🗓️ 26 October 2018
⏱️ 58 minutes
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Summary
The dark shadow of Silicon Valley is growing longer everyday, covering more and more of the globe and spreading not just technology, but a particular value set as well. By this time many know about the hyper-exploitative business models of companies like Uber or TaskRabbit. Or about how AirBnB has heavily reduced housing stocks in cities worldwide. But in his new book, Keith A. Spencer goes further than just picking on a few high profile companies. He lays out an argument for why Silicon Valley, at its core, is a highly exploitative and problematic industry. With a look at the tech world from the vantage point of the marginalized and oppressed—those who have not benefited from the incredible wealth bubbling up in the valley—"A People's History of Silicon Valley: how the tech industry exploits workers, erodes privacy, and undermines democracy," presents a damning thesis for why this new world of addictive gadgets and union-busting is increasingly undemocratic and dangerous. A People's History of Silicon Valley is published by Eyewear Publishing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, The term Silicon Valley has become synonymous with the tech industry. It's not just the St. declar valley and so the thing about writing people's history of Silicon Valley is that you have to cover how the tech industry has affected people's lives |
| 0:33.2 | across the entire world. |
| 0:34.5 | When someone at Uber changes |
| 0:35.8 | how the algorithm works for picking up rides, |
| 0:38.1 | like an Uber driver in Mumbai is affected, |
| 0:40.7 | or if Facebook all of a sudden changes the way that you see things in your timeline, |
| 0:45.4 | like a small family business in Beijing may suddenly have fewer customers. |
| 0:50.1 | So the decisions and the choice is that a small number of people, you know, engineers and CEOs, |
| 0:56.4 | the decisions that those engineers and CEOs make in Silicon Valley have repercussions |
| 1:00.0 | across the whole world and can sometimes radically affect or ruin people's lives overnight. |
| 1:04.9 | And that's profoundly undemocratic. |
| 1:08.3 | I'm Dela Duncan and you're listening to an |
| 1:15.0 | author of the up-stream |
| 1:12.0 | keyth a Spencer, cultural critic, editor at Salon, |
| 1:15.0 | an author of the book A People's History of Silicon Valley, |
| 1:19.0 | how the tech industry exploits workers, erodes privacy, |
| 1:22.0 | and undermines democracy, just out by |
| 1:25.2 | squint books. This interview was conducted by upstream producer Robert Raymond. |
| 1:37.0 | Hi Keith, welcome to Upstream. To begin, I'm wondering if you could introduce yourself to our listeners and maybe tell us a little bit about how you came to do the work that you're doing? |
| 1:45.0 | Sure, yeah, my name is Keith A Spencer. |
| 1:48.0 | I'm an editor at Salon and I manage the science and tech coverage and write a fair bit of tech criticism |
| 1:55.2 | myself too. My family goes back to the Bay Area many generations and has been for the most part |
... |
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