Download or read book Abolish Silicon Valley written by Wendy Liu and published by Watkins Media Limited. This book was released on 2020-04-14 with total page 229 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good. "Lucid, probing and urgent. Wendy Liu manages to be both optimistic about the emancipatory potential of tech and scathing about the industry that has harnessed it for bleak and self-serving ends." -- Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal "An inspiring memoir manifesto...Technologists all over the world are realizing that no amount of code can substitute for political engagement. Liu's memoir is a road map for that journey of realization." -- Cory Doctorow, author of Radicalized and Little Brother Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley? These days, it's hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It's becoming clear that the tech industry's promised "innovation" is neither sustainable nor always desirable. Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.

Download or read book Secrets of Silicon Valley written by Deborah Perry Piscione and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2013-04-02 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: While the global economy languishes, one place just keeps growing despite failing banks, uncertain markets, and high unemployment: Silicon Valley. In the last two years, more than 100 incubators have popped up there, and the number of angel investors has skyrocketed. Today, 40 percent of all venture capital investments in the United States come from Silicon Valley firms, compared to 10 percent from New York. In Secrets of Silicon Valley, entrepreneur and media commentator Deborah Perry Piscione takes us inside this vibrant ecosystem where meritocracy rules the day. She explores Silicon Valley's exceptionally risk-tolerant culture, and why it thrives despite the many laws that make California one of the worst states in the union for business. Drawing on interviews with investors, entrepreneurs, and community leaders, as well as a host of case studies from Google to Paypal, Piscione argues that Silicon Valley's unique culture is the best hope for the future of American prosperity and the global business community and offers lessons from the Valley to inspire reform in other communities and industries, from Washington, DC to Wall Street.

Download or read book Troublemakers written by Leslie Berlin and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 512 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Acclaimed historian Leslie Berlin’s “deeply researched and dramatic narrative of Silicon Valley’s early years…is a meticulously told…compelling history” (The New York Times) of the men and women who chased innovation, and ended up changing the world. Troublemakers is the gripping tale of seven exceptional men and women, pioneers of Silicon Valley in the 1970s and early 1980s. Together, they worked across generations, industries, and companies to bring technology from Pentagon offices and university laboratories to the rest of us. In doing so, they changed the world. “In this vigorous account…a sturdy, skillfully constructed work” (Kirkus Reviews), historian Leslie Berlin introduces the people and stories behind the birth of the Internet and the microprocessor, as well as Apple, Atari, Genentech, Xerox PARC, ROLM, ASK, and the iconic venture capital firms Sequoia Capital and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. In the space of only seven years, five major industries—personal computing, video games, biotechnology, modern venture capital, and advanced semiconductor logic—were born. “There is much to learn from Berlin’s account, particularly that Silicon Valley has long provided the backdrop where technology, elite education, institutional capital, and entrepreneurship collide with incredible force” (The Christian Science Monitor). Featured among well-known Silicon Valley innovators are Mike Markkula, the underappreciated chairman of Apple who owned one-third of the company; Bob Taylor, who masterminded the personal computer; software entrepreneur Sandra Kurtzig, the first woman to take a technology company public; Bob Swanson, the cofounder of Genentech; Al Alcorn, the Atari engineer behind the first successful video game; Fawn Alvarez, who rose from the factory line to the executive suite; and Niels Reimers, the Stanford administrator who changed how university innovations reach the public. Together, these troublemakers rewrote the rules and invented the future.

Download or read book The Startup Community Way written by Brad Feld and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-08-03 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Way Forward for Entrepreneurship Around the World We are in the midst of a startup revolution. The growth and proliferation of innovation-driven startup activity is profound, unprecedented, and global in scope. Today, it is understood that communities of support and knowledge-sharing go along with other resources. The importance of collaboration and a long-term commitment has gained wider acceptance. These principles are adopted in many startup communities throughout the world. And yet, much more work is needed. Startup activity is highly concentrated in large cities. Governments and other actors such as large corporations and universities are not collaborating with each other nor with entrepreneurs as well as they could. Too often, these actors try to control activity or impose their view from the top-down, rather than supporting an environment that is led from the bottom-up. We continue to see a disconnect between an entrepreneurial mindset and that of many actors who wish to engage with and support entrepreneurship. There are structural reasons for this, but we can overcome many of these obstacles with appropriate focus and sustained practice. No one tells this story better than Brad Feld and Ian Hathaway. The Startup Community Way: Evolving an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem explores what makes startup communities thrive and how to improve collaboration in these rapidly evolving, complex environments. The Startup Community Way is an explanatory guide for startup communities. Rooted in the theory of complex systems, this book establishes the systemic properties of entrepreneurial ecosystems and explains why their complex nature leads people to make predictable mistakes. As complex systems, value creation occurs in startup communities primarily through the interaction of the "parts" - the people, organizations, resources, and conditions involved - not the parts themselves. This continual process of bottom-up interactions unfolds naturally, producing value in novel and unexpected ways. Through these complex, emergent processes, the whole becomes greater and substantially different than what the parts alone could produce. Because of this, participants must take a fundamentally different approach than is common in much of our civic and professional lives. Participants must take a whole-system view, rather than simply trying to optimize their individual part. They must prioritize experimentation and learning over planning and execution. Complex systems are uncertain and unpredictable. They cannot be controlled, only guided and influenced. Each startup community is unique. Replication is enticing but impossible. The race to become "The Next Silicon Valley" is futile - even Silicon Valley couldn't recreate itself. This book: Offers practical advice for entrepreneurs, community builders, government officials, and other stakeholders who want to harness the power of entrepreneurship in their city Describes the core components of startup communities and entrepreneurial ecosystems, as well as an explanation of the differences between these two related, but distinct concepts Advances a new framework for effective startup community building based on the theory of complex systems and insights from systems thinking Includes contributions from leading entrepreneurial voices Is a must-have resource for entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, executives, business and community leaders, economic development authorities, policymakers, university officials, and anyone wishing to understand how startup communities work anywhere in the world

Download or read book The Score Takes Care of Itself written by Bill Walsh and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-08-20 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The last lecture on leadership by the NFL's greatest coach: Bill Walsh Bill Walsh is a towering figure in the history of the NFL. His advanced leadership transformed the San Francisco 49ers from the worst franchise in sports to a legendary dynasty. In the process, he changed the way football is played. Prior to his death, Walsh granted a series of exclusive interviews to bestselling author Steve Jamison. These became his ultimate lecture on leadership. Additional insights and perspective are provided by Hall of Fame quarterback Joe Montana and others. Bill Walsh taught that the requirements of successful leadership are the same whether you run an NFL franchise, a fortune 500 company, or a hardware store with 12 employees. These final words of 'wisdom by Walsh' will inspire, inform, and enlighten leaders in all professions.

Download or read book The Code written by Margaret O'Mara and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2020-07-07 with total page 514 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of New York Magazine's best books on Silicon Valley! The true, behind-the-scenes history of the people who built Silicon Valley and shaped Big Tech in America Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government--and always had been--and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was. Now, after almost five years of pioneering research, O'Mara has produced the definitive history of Silicon Valley for our time, the story of mavericks and visionaries, but also of powerful institutions creating the framework for innovation, from the Pentagon to Stanford University. It is also a story of a community that started off remarkably homogeneous and tight-knit and stayed that way, and whose belief in its own mythology has deepened into a collective hubris that has led to astonishing triumphs as well as devastating second-order effects. Deploying a wonderfully rich and diverse cast of protagonists, from the justly famous to the unjustly obscure, across four generations of explosive growth in the Valley, from the forties to the present, O'Mara has wrestled one of the most fateful developments in modern American history into magnificent narrative form. She is on the ground with all of the key tech companies, chronicling the evolution in their offerings through each successive era, and she has a profound fingertip feel for the politics of the sector and its relation to the larger cultural narrative about tech as it has evolved over the years. Perhaps most impressive, O'Mara has penetrated the inner kingdom of tech venture capital firms, the insular and still remarkably old-boy world that became the cockpit of American capitalism and the crucible for bringing technological innovation to market, or not. The transformation of big tech into the engine room of the American economy and the nexus of so many of our hopes and dreams--and, increasingly, our nightmares--can be understood, in Margaret O'Mara's masterful hands, as the story of one California valley. As her majestic history makes clear, its fate is the fate of us all.

Download or read book Seeing Silicon Valley written by Mary Beth Meehan and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2021-05-12 with total page 113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Also published in French as Visages de la Silicon Valley.

Download or read book After On written by Rob Reid and published by Del Rey. This book was released on 2018-06-05 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The definitive novel of today’s Silicon Valley, After On flash-captures our cultural and technological moment with up-to-the-instant savvy. Matters of privacy and government intrusion, post-Tinder romance, nihilistic terrorism, artificial consciousness, synthetic biology, and much more are tackled with authority and brash playfulness by New York Times bestselling author Rob Reid. Meet Phluttr—a diabolically addictive new social network and a villainess, heroine, enemy, and/or bestie to millions. Phluttr has ingested every fact and message ever sent to, from, and about her innumerable users. Her capabilities astound her makers—and they don’t even know the tenth of it. But what’s the purpose of this stunning creation? Is it a front for something even darker and more powerful than the NSA? A bid to create a trillion-dollar market by becoming “The UberX of Sex”? Or a reckless experiment that could spawn the digital equivalent of a middle-school mean girl with enough charisma, dirt, and cunning to bend the entire planet to her will? Phluttr has it in her to become the greatest gossip, flirt, or matchmaker in history. Or she could cure cancer, bring back Seinfeld, then start a nuclear war. Whatever she does, it’s not up to us. But a motley band of Silicon Valley entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, and engineers might be able to influence her. After On achieves the literary singularity—fusing speculative satire and astonishing reality into a sharp-witted, ferociously believable, IMAX-wide view of our digital age. Praise for After On “Rob Reid’s mind is like no other known thing in the universe, and this book is a truly spectacular way to discover it.”—Chris Anderson, head of TED “An extended philosophy seminar run by a dozen insane Cold War heads-of-station, three millennial COOs and that guy you went to college with who always had the best weed but never did his laundry.”—NPR “An epic cyberthriller peppered with pop-culture references, metadata, and Silicon Valley in-jokes.”—Kirkus Reviews “It’s rare to find a book that combines laugh-out-loud humor and cutting-edge science with profound philosophical speculation. This is that book.”—Analog “[Rob Reid] writes in a humorous and sarcastic style while unveiling a terrifying and frightening scenario that seems all too real.”—Associated Press

Download or read book The Silicon Valley Edge written by Chong-Moon Lee and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 462 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Looks at Silicon Valley's business environment, and what features have made it a fertile ground for start-up companies who develop radical and disruptive technologies.

Download or read book How to American written by Jimmy O. Yang and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2018-03-13 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Standup comic, actor and fan favorite from HBO's Silicon Valley and the film Crazy Rich Asians shares his memoir of growing up as a Chinese immigrant in California and making it in Hollywood. "I turned down a job in finance to pursue a career in stand-up comedy. My dad thought I was crazy. But I figured it was better to disappoint my parents for a few years than to disappoint myself for the rest of my life. I had to disappoint them in order to pursue what I loved. That was the only way to have my Chinese turnip cake and eat an American apple pie too." Jimmy O. Yang is a standup comedian, film and TV actor and fan favorite as the character Jian Yang from the popular HBO series Silicon Valley. In How to American, he shares his story of growing up as a Chinese immigrant who pursued a Hollywood career against the wishes of his parents: Yang arrived in Los Angeles from Hong Kong at age 13, learned English by watching BET RapCity for three hours a day, and worked as a strip club DJ while pursuing his comedy career. He chronicles a near deportation episode during a college trip Tijuana to finally becoming a proud US citizen ten years later. Featuring those and many other hilarious stories, while sharing some hard-earned lessons, How to American mocks stereotypes while offering tongue in cheek advice on pursuing the American dreams of fame, fortune, and strippers.

Download or read book Valley of Genius written by Adam Fisher and published by Hachette+ORM. This book was released on 2014-11-04 with total page 387 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This is the most important book on Silicon Valley I've read in two decades. It will take us all back to our roots in the counterculture, and will remind us of the true nature of the innovation process, before we tried to tame it with slogans and buzzwords." -- Po Bronson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Nudist on the Late Shift and Nurtureshock A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley -- from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way. Rarely has one economy asserted itself as swiftly--and as aggressively--as the entity we now know as Silicon Valley. Built with a seemingly permanent culture of reinvention, Silicon Valley does not fight change; it embraces it, and now powers the American economy and global innovation. So how did this omnipotent and ever-morphing place come to be? It was not by planning. It was, like many an empire before it, part luck, part timing, and part ambition. And part pure, unbridled genius... Drawing on over two hundred in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes readers from the dawn of the personal computer and the internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented. It interweaves accounts of invention and betrayal, overnight success and underground exploits, to tell the story of Silicon Valley like it has never been told before. Read it to discover the stories that Valley insiders tell each other: the tall tales that are all, improbably, true.

Download or read book Understanding Silicon Valley written by Martin Kenney and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2000 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This text explores the factors that have made Silicon Valley such a fertile breeding ground for new technologies and new firms. It looks at how its pioneering achievements begana̧nd the forces that have propelled its unprecedented growth.

Download or read book Bad Blood written by John Carreyrou and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2018-05-21 with total page 354 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NATIONAL BESTSELLER • The gripping story of Elizabeth Holmes and Theranos—one of the biggest corporate frauds in history—a tale of ambition and hubris set amid the bold promises of Silicon Valley, rigorously reported by the prize-winning journalist. With a new Afterword covering her trial and sentencing, bringing the story to a close. “Chilling ... Reads like a thriller ... Carreyrou tells [the Theranos story] virtually to perfection.” —The New York Times Book Review In 2014, Theranos founder and CEO Elizabeth Holmes was widely seen as the next Steve Jobs: a brilliant Stanford dropout whose startup “unicorn” promised to revolutionize the medical industry with its breakthrough device, which performed the whole range of laboratory tests from a single drop of blood. Backed by investors such as Larry Ellison and Tim Draper, Theranos sold shares in a fundraising round that valued the company at more than $9 billion, putting Holmes’s worth at an estimated $4.5 billion. There was just one problem: The technology didn’t work. Erroneous results put patients in danger, leading to misdiagnoses and unnecessary treatments. All the while, Holmes and her partner, Sunny Balwani, worked to silence anyone who voiced misgivings—from journalists to their own employees.

Download or read book Breaking Into YOUR Silicon Valley written by Irwin Ki and published by . This book was released on 2018-11 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you ready for career disruption? Have you ever wanted to work at Google, Facebook, Amazon, or a hot tech startup? But never tried due to the belief of needing coding experience, an Ivy League education, or think you'd have to move the West Coast. That's what I thought...I've watched a whole generation get brainwashed by thinking of starting their own business is the ONLY way to get rich. In reality, 1 in 4 millionaires has worked "Gateway Jobs" inside of a company before building their fortunes. I even got caught up in it, and did the cliche "quit my job and become an entrepreneur." My most successful business venture profited about $72,000....but that took about 7 years to realize. Divided out by 7 years that would put my income below the poverty level HOORAY STARTING A BUSINESS ← (insert sarcasm)Feeling like a failure, I decided to get a "job" to support myself. I had no real skills, so I got a "Gateway Job" as a Sales Development Representative (a fancy title for "meeting setter"), but by doing this I got mentorship, sales training, and shockingly made over $100,000 in my first year. This "Gateway Job" taught me far more than my business ever did (not to mention paid me far more).This opened my eyes into this highly-paid, highly-in-demand world of technology. I watched these technology "Gateway Jobs" rocket people from: -Austin started as a marketing intern at Uber, now she's on the executive team of a $70billion company. -Jim went from a customer support rep wearing a phone headset all day, to moving up the company ladder, to getting a juicy exit when the company IPO'd. -Karina went from Macy's retail, moved up to sales development, and now has a six-figure a year job as a senior renewals account manager.By the end of this book you will have a solid idea of which of the 38 "Gateway Job" will be the best way to break into (and have a successful & lucrative career) in departments such as marketing, sales, finance, operations, IT, legal, development, product management, customer support, and HR. Plus this advice is applicable if you are NOT in Silicon Valley. I break down INSIDER STRATEGIES on how to land a tech job in your hometown & INSIDER STEP BY STEP guide on how to go from blank resume to multiple six-figure offers.Here's the book in a nutshell: PART 1: Showing WHY technology is the best industry to get into, and +20 examples of people who got a small "Gateway Job" then landed their Dream Job. Includes interviews, numbers, and a "Gateway Job Flow Chart" for each career path.PART 2: We dig up and find 2-8 Gateway Jobs (38 in total ) for each department including marketing, sales, finance, operations, IT, legal, development, product management, customer support, and HR.PART 3: We then show you HOW to get your first "Gateway Job" with a 10 step action plan to give you a proven tech resume template (used to get into Google, Facebook, Cisco), exercises, scripts, and tips on how to position your resume and skills. BONUS chapters: How to work in the Crypto/Blockchain & Video game industry This book is a refreshing career guide for the 21st century and includes compiled industry knowledge and advice from industry leaders like Mark Cuban (Shark Tank), Reid Hoffman (LinkedIn), Eric Schmidt (Google), and much more If you are looking for a proven way to land your first internship or TRANSFORM your career and life."You won't regret getting this book" -Irwin Ki

Download or read book Voices from the Valley written by Ben Tarnoff and published by FSG Originals. This book was released on 2020-10-13 with total page 103 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From FSGO x Logic: anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, providing a bird's-eye view of the industry In Voices from the Valley, the celebrated writers and Logic cofounders Moira Weigel and Ben Tarnoff take an unprecedented dive into the tech industry, conducting unfiltered, in-depth, anonymous interviews with tech workers at all levels, including a data scientist, a start-up founder, a cook who serves their lunch, and a PR wizard. In the process, Weigel and Tarnoff open the conversation about the tech industry at large, a conversation that has previously been dominated by the voices of CEOs. Deeply illuminating, revealing, and at times lurid, Voices from the Valley is a vital and comprehensive view of an industry that governs our lives. FSG Originals × Logic dissects the way technology functions in everyday lives. The titans of Silicon Valley, for all their utopian imaginings, never really had our best interests at heart: recent threats to democracy, truth, privacy, and safety, as a result of tech’s reckless pursuit of progress, have shown as much. We present an alternate story, one that delights in capturing technology in all its contradictions and innovation, across borders and socioeconomic divisions, from history through the future, beyond platitudes and PR hype, and past doom and gloom. Our collaboration features four brief but provocative forays into the tech industry’s many worlds, and aspires to incite fresh conversations about technology focused on nuanced and accessible explorations of the emerging tools that reorganize and redefine life today.

Download or read book The Psychology of Silicon Valley written by Katy Cook and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2019-10-15 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Misinformation. Job displacement. Information overload. Economic inequality. Digital addiction. The breakdown of democracy, civility, and truth itself. This open access book explores the conscious and unconscious norms, values, and characteristics that drive behaviors within the high-tech capital of the world, Silicon Valley, and the sector it represents. In an era where the reach and influence of a single industry has the potential to define the future of our world, it has become apparent just how little we know about the organizations driving these changes. The Psychology of Silicon Valley offers a revealing look inside the mind of world’s most influential industry and how the identity, culture, myths, and motivations of Big Tech are harming society. The book argues that the bad values and lack of emotional intelligence borne in the vacuum of Silicon Valley will have lasting consequences on everything from social equality to the future of work to our collective mental health. Katy Cook expertly walks us through the psychological landscape of Silicon Valley, including its leadership, ethical, and cultural problems, and artfully explains why we cannot afford to ignore the psychology and values that are behind our technology any longer.

Download or read book Geek Girl Rising written by Heather Cabot and published by St. Martin's Press. This book was released on 2017-05-23 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book "isn't about the famous tech trailblazers you already know, like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer. Instead, veteran journalists Heather Cabot and Samantha Walravens introduce readers to the ... female entrepreneurs and technologists fighting at the grassroots level for an ownership stake in the revolution that's changing the way we live, work and connect to each other"--Amazon.com.