The Eternal Hunt for Relevance: Doree Shafrir Discusses Startup
Doree Shafrir discusses her debut novel, Startup, the differences between journalism and fiction, and why she chose to tell this particular story. ...more
Posts Tagged: silicon valley
The Rumpus Interview with Viet Thanh Nguyen
Viet Than Nguyen discusses his story collection The Refugees, growing up in a Vietnamese community in San Jose in the 1980s, and the power of secondhand memories. ...more
Peter Thiel’s War on Free Speech: A Rumpus Roundup
Last week, tech billionaire Peter Thiel admitted to funding lawsuits against Gawker Media, including the lawsuit brought by Hulk Hogan. Hogan won a $140 million judgment against Gawker after the site published a small portion of a recording of Hogan having sex with a friend’s wife and talking about eating too much sushi.
...moreWriting Women into Technology
For Motherboard at VICE, John R. Platt examines the gender disparity in journalism sources and the consequences in his own work when addressing and correcting that disparity. Platt’s piece ran as part of Motherboard’s Silicon Divide series that looked at gender inequality in the tech industry.
...moreReboot the Arc of Progress
At the Atlantic, Adrienne LaFrance delves into the popular belief that technology naturally bends towards equality and progress to show how rarely that idea actually plays out.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Weekly Geekery
Mystery in Silicon Valley
...moreWas this a brilliant viral marketing scheme, a literary treasure hunt orchestrated by some corporation angling for free publicity to promote a new energy drink or video game? Or was it a purely artistic endeavor, aimed at stimulating a discussion about how the tech boom has altered our culture, economy and society?
Weekly Geekery
Hackers are taking down the police.
Should we regulate the most addictive substance known to humans aka the Internet?
The dark side of Silicon Valley.
The food legacy of the great cranberry scare.
...more
The Rumpus Interview with William Gibson
Legendary technomodernist William Gibson, author of Neuromancer, talks about his latest book, The Peripheral, predicting the future, and how writing about Silicon Valley today feels like his early work. ...more
How Gone Is My Valley?
It does us all a disservice to separate the Valley’s current industrial action from that of its natural environment, human history and broader political context. ...more
The Rumpus Interview with Adam Johnson
Pulitzer Prize–winning author Adam Johnson talks about his new book, Fortune Smiles, fiction and voice, veterans and defectors, solar-powered robots and self-driving cars, and infrared baseball caps that can blind security cameras. ...more
Weekly Geekery
Are you a science dummy?
Do you need to be happy? There is an app for that.
Algorithms don’t know best.
The history of Silicon Valley.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Virtual reality is the final frontier.
Do livestreaming apps change the news?
Ellen Pao and the media and Silicon Valley and Twitter and sexism and everything.
Is virtual medicine real medicine?
...moreWeekly Geekery
Google wants to rank searches on fact.
But who decides what is a fact?
Your dog ruined everything. You did too.
For the last time, take those baby pictures down.
It is time to log off the Internet.
...moreWeekly Geekery
A world of enchanted objects is both alluring and deeply terrifying.
And now, a little about how Silicon Valley treats the LGBT community.
It’s every bibliophile’s wet dream, but is Kindle Unlimited worth it?
Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to “Like.”
...moreWeekly Geekery
Will computers replace teachers?
In Silicon Valley, ladies don’t get no respect.
And that difficult intersection between women, Silicon Valley, and speaking up every time is embodied in one woman: Shanley Kane.
Crowdsourced editing and fact-checking. It’s a thing now.
...more
Of Mice and Machines
Ever wonder what John Steinbeck would make of angel investors and Google? McSweeney’s contributor Thomas Scott has reimagined Steinbeck’s classic Of Mice and Men, taking George and Lennie from the fields of Great Depression-era California to modern-day Silicon Valley.
...moreThe Dark Secret of the Old Silicon Valley
In 1983, “Silicon Valley” meant something different: different tech companies were dominating for different reasons, in different areas of California’s Santa Clara County.
The Atlantic’s Alexis C. Madrigal went to look at what remained of that Silicon Valley from thirty years ago, and what he found is actually kind of shocking:
...moreI explained myself to him, trying not to sound completely ridiculous.
The Bay Area: A History of Booms and Busts
At the London Review of Books, Rebecca Solnit provides readers with historic and contemporary insight into the Bay Area’s long history of “booms and busts”–from the California gold rush to the dot-com bubble—and examines the positive, but mostly detrimental effects these economic changes had/have on Bay Area residents.
...moreThe Sexism That Makes Facebook Run
When Katherine Losse’s The Boy Kings, a book about the sexist culture she encountered while working at Facebook during its early days, came out, Melissa Gira Grant paid attention.
Grant had worked for a Silicon Valley gossip blog during the same time period and had come to her own dismayed conclusions about women’s roles in the tech industry.
...moreConversations About the Internet #5: Anonymous Facebook Employee
Facebook employees know better than most the value of privacy.
