Palo Alto : a history of California, capitalism, and the world /
History of California, capitalism, and the world
Malcolm Harris.
- First edition.
- viii, 708 pages : black and white illustrations ; 25 cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
To whom time is money -- The combine -- Blood that trots young -- Local ghosts -- Bionomics -- Hooverville -- Men with potential -- Space settlers -- The solid state -- Personal revolution -- How to destroy an empire -- California über Alles -- War capitalism -- Jobs and Gates -- Americas online -- B2K -- You better try to make me rich -- Blister in the sun -- Resolution.
Palo Alto's weather is temperate, its people are educated and enterprising, its corporations are spiritually and materially ambitious and demonstrably world-changing. Palo Alto is also a haunted toxic waste dump built on stolen Indian burial grounds, and an integral part of the capitalist world system. In PALO ALTO, the first comprehensive, global history of Silicon Valley, Malcolm Harris examines how and why Northern California evolved in the particular, consequential way it did, tracing the ideologies, technologies, and policies that have been engineered there over the course of 150 years of Anglo settler colonialism, from IQ tests to the "tragedy of the commons," racial genetics, and "broken windows" theory. The Internet and computers, too. It's a story about how a small American suburb became a powerful engine for economic growth and war, and how it came to lead the world into a surprisingly disastrous 21st century. PALO ALTO is an urgent and visionary history of the way we live now, one that ends with a clear-eyed, radical proposition for how we might begin to change course.
9780316592031 031659203X
2022936529
High technology industries--History.--California--Santa Clara Valley (Santa Clara County) Industria de alta tecnología --Historia--Valle de Santa Clara (California, Estados Unidos)
Palo Alto (Calif.)--History. Palo Alto (California, Estados Unidos) --Historia Palo Alto (Calif.)--Social conditions--History. Palo Alto (California) --Condiciones sociales Palo Alto (Calif.)--Economic conditions--History. Palo Alto (California) --Condiciones económicas Valle de Santa Clara (California, Estados Unidos)