Amongst the turmoil of recent years, there are perhaps two broad overriding lessons. The first is that people find it difficult to admit when they are wrong. The second is that technology will perform an increasingly powerful role in whatever shape the social world ends up taking.
As a start-up entrepreneur who reinvented herself as a political writer, Wendy Liu’s new book Abolish Silicon Valley concerns itself with both of these lessons. After exploring what she now sees as her misguided acceptance of tech sector logic, Liu’s conclusion is that we need to make radical and profound changes to the relationship between technology and capitalism if we wish to stop the more damaging social consequences of Silicon Valley’s actions.
Liu’s book carefully describes the experience of being immersed in the tech sector. From building up her skills as an open-source coder, through to interning at Google and then onto the struggle of building up her own tech company, the book hinges on Liu’s growing discomfort with what she was witnessing. Left cold by the shiny clamour of the tech world, Liu’s enthusiasm was replaced by a profound political realization that the particular modes of entrepreneurship that fuel the tech sector are limiting what is possible, and even causing social harm.
