A study of Silicon Valley technology titans and how their narratives of success have influenced political, social, and economic discourse.
In a fairly short period of time, roughly 25 years since the internet became accessible to private development, the libertarian-leaning belief system of Silicon Valley has practically become dogma. As former New York Times tech columnist Cohen pointedly shows in his character studies, the clout of tech superstars, the so-called know-it-alls, is based on their winner-take-all vision of society, a meritocratic fantasy that conflates their enormous wealth with individual greatness. Aside from their libertarian narrative of success, a chief principle of their belief is disruption. The concept has become so ingrained in contemporary culture that it has even infected politics, giving rise to outsider politicians such as Donald Trump, whom PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel openly endorsed. The goal of disruption is a conceited effort to upset the status quo, or established order, regardless of how successful or popular it may be. It might be tempting to characterize Cohen as a Luddite with an ax to grind, but he shows how the cult of personality for tech entrepreneurs developed out of a “combination of a hacker’s arrogance and an entrepreneur’s greed” and they have selfishly exploited technological advances for personal gain. Beginning with researcher and early artificial intelligence advocate John McCarthy, the author devotes each chapter to a specific CEO or mega-investor—including Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg, Microsoft’s Bill Gates, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, and Google’s Sergey Brin and Larry Page—and takes aim at the toxic mythmaking that legitimizes the often underhanded business practices, questionable ethics, and self-aggrandizement. By exposing the fragile veneer of their exorbitant wealth, Cohen helps chip away at the power these men (another crucial quality) have carved out for themselves.
An enlightening breakdown of how Silicon Valley billionaires have shifted popular discourse in their favor.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-62097-210-6
Page Count: 272
Publisher: The New Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 4, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2017
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This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”
11
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The powerful story of a father’s past and a son’s future.
Atlantic senior writer Coates (The Beautiful Struggle: A Father, Two Sons, and an Unlikely Road to Manhood, 2008) offers this eloquent memoir as a letter to his teenage son, bearing witness to his own experiences and conveying passionate hopes for his son’s life. “I am wounded,” he writes. “I am marked by old codes, which shielded me in one world and then chained me in the next.” Coates grew up in the tough neighborhood of West Baltimore, beaten into obedience by his father. “I was a capable boy, intelligent and well-liked,” he remembers, “but powerfully afraid.” His life changed dramatically at Howard University, where his father taught and from which several siblings graduated. Howard, he writes, “had always been one of the most critical gathering posts for black people.” He calls it The Mecca, and its faculty and his fellow students expanded his horizons, helping him to understand “that the black world was its own thing, more than a photo-negative of the people who believe they are white.” Coates refers repeatedly to whites’ insistence on their exclusive racial identity; he realizes now “that nothing so essentialist as race” divides people, but rather “the actual injury done by people intent on naming us, intent on believing that what they have named matters more than anything we could ever actually do.” After he married, the author’s world widened again in New York, and later in Paris, where he finally felt extricated from white America’s exploitative, consumerist dreams. He came to understand that “race” does not fully explain “the breach between the world and me,” yet race exerts a crucial force, and young blacks like his son are vulnerable and endangered by “majoritarian bandits.” Coates desperately wants his son to be able to live “apart from fear—even apart from me.”
This moving, potent testament might have been titled “Black Lives Matter.” Or: “An American Tragedy.”Pub Date: July 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-8129-9354-7
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Spiegel & Grau
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2015
Categories: BIOGRAPHY & MEMOIR | UNITED STATES | HISTORY | CURRENT EVENTS & SOCIAL ISSUES | ETHNICITY & RACE
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A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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