The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America by Margaret O’Mara (PDF)

Description

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.

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐This is an extraordinarily important and highly readable book. It examines the relationship between the U.S. government and Silicon Valley at a time when that relationship seems under great stress. We see Washington gearing up to target Big Tech for its violation of personal privacy and the widespread dissemination of hate and lies through social media. The Trump Administration bears particular animus toward Amazon because founder and CEO Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post, which has been critical of Trump. For its part, Big Tech seems dismissive of Washington’s role in promoting technological development. Worst of all, to me, is that some in Big Tech prefer to work with the Chinese government rather than the American government. At a time when we are facing a massive technological challenge from China, Washington and leading technology companies ought to be collaborating in creating winning strategies. O’Mara makes it clear that Silicon Valley owes its very existence to massive research and development spending by the federal government starting in World War II. She writes that the tech leaders who have become household names, from Steve Jobs to Mark Zuckerberg, “were not lone cowboys, but very talented people whose success was made possible by the work of many other people, networks, and institutions. Those included the big-government programs that political leaders of both parties critiqued so forcefully, and that many tech leaders viewed with suspicion if not downright hostility. From the Bomb to the moon shot to the backbone of the Internet and beyond, public spending fueled an explosion of scientific and technical discovery, providing the foundation for generations of start-ups to come.” This gets at the heart of the whole ideological argument about “industrial policy,” which has paralyzed the U.S. government. I argue in my book, The New Art of War: China’s Deep Strategy Inside the United States, that we Americans need to develop a technology policy or a series of policies to respond to what China is achieving. Huawei’s roll-out of 5G wireless communications technology is just one example of how the Chinese are attempting to leapfrog the United States and all other major nations with Artificial Intelligence, quantum computing and other advanced technologies. But opponents of an industrial policy have always argued that the government should not pick winners and losers and that government spending for specific technologies represents “corporate welfare.” The political firestome over Solyndra during the Obama Administration is a case in point. O’Mara shows that there are right ways and wrong ways for a government to support the commercialization of new ideas. She writes that U.S. government money flowed “indirectly, competitively, in ways that gave the men and women of the tech world remarkable freedom to define what the future might look like, to push the boundaries of the technologically possible, and to make money in the process. Academic scientists, not politicians and bureaucrats, spurred the funding for and shaped the design of more-powerful computers, breakthroughs in artificial intelligence, and the Internet…” So we should do a better job of defining how the federal government can best support technological development. The Obama Administration may have been a bit too aggressive and too specific in attempting to develop the lithium ion battery field. A123 Systems, the Boston-based maker of lithium ion batteries that received large scale federal funding, ended up going bankrupt—and being sold to the Chinese. This was an example of how NOT to develop a critical technology. There is work to be done on all fronts but Silicon Valley’s psychology looms as one major barrier. O’Mara writes that U.S. military spending has been a major source of support for Big Tech. Yet many in Silicon Valley are openly dismissive of the Pentagon. O’Mara notes “a continuing irony: that some of those most enriched by the new-style military-industrial complex were also some of the tech industry’s most outspoken critics of big government, and champions of the free market. In the space-age Valley, the person embodying this contradiction was Dave Packard. In the cyber age, it was Peter Thiel.” In a particularly stinging line, she writes that “Thiel became a latter-day H. Ross Perot: a champion of free enterprise who was simultaneously reaping a great fortune from the government he disdained.” Thiel made millions by co-founding Palantir, a cutting-edge Big Data analytical company that relies on Defense Department business. Hopefully, O’Mara’s book will show everyone the important web of connections between the U.S. government and America’s technology champions and help us serious about responding to China’s state-subsidized technology offensive.

⭐It starts well describing the role of government funding and the advantages Stanford and California provided compared to other universities and places, but it eventually has too much insignificant information that meanders with no real theme and it becomes tedious and dull. It reads more like a diary with only minimal analysis of what made it work. It lacks many of the most interesting details I learned in other histories. For example, it provides no real history of Sun Microsystems. It just mentions it as another tech company that developed in the 90s. If I recall correctly, “Sun” originally was an acronym for “Stanford University Network.” It was developed in a building at Stanford by people that wanted to link their computers. Cisco had a similar start when a couple who worked in different buildings at Stanford wanted to build a wider network. When both systems worked other universities began offering to pay to have those people build networks at their campuses. Stanford could have claimed ownership of the technology but instead gave the rights to the people that developed it and they started Sun and Cisco. None of that is mentioned. The book breezes over Bill Gates acquiring an operating system for IBM’s PC. Microsoft did not have an operating system when it first began selling other software to IBM.. IBM had decided to rush development of a PC by buying all the software and parts off the shelf rather than take the time to develop it in house. Initially IBM planned to acquire an operating system developed by some counter-culture types who deliberately stood up the IBM people when they called to make an offer. Desperate to get a system, Gates offered to acquire one he had only heard about but insisted that IBM would not restrict Microsoft’s ability to license it to others. That non exclusive license was what enabled Microsoft to soon dominate PC software as other companies such as Dell, Compaq, HP, Micron, Samsung, Toshiba and many others copied IBM’s model, all using Microsoft’s OS. Another area given little attention is the development of “killer aps” like Visicalc that enabled Apple to evolve from a geeky toy into a device wanted by every accountant. Apple played no role in developing that application but it was the key to Apple’s initial success. I give the book three stars for the history it provides I didn’t know before but deduct two for omitting some of the most interesting facts while including unimportant info that makes the last half a real slog.

⭐There are several things that make this read so appealing. A revolution for white males maybe, but an incredibly slow evolution for everyone else. A new appreciation of the role of government from WWII onward to present day. The history of so many individuals responsibly involved in this revolution. Incredibly sourced-this author goes to the head of the class!

⭐Possibly an interesting book, but font far far too small and doesn’t come in Kindle mode

⭐Nice book

⭐This is a very well researched book. Ms O’Mara’s definitive history of the tech business in Silicon Valley is full of interesting anecdotes about the colorful characters who changed the world with technology. I believe I read that this book was 10 years in the making and it certainly shows in the detail and wonderful stories. Bravo!

⭐It took me a long time to read this book. And that is a good thing. What took me so long was marking and rereading these marked sections. It was researching people, technologies, places. Having had some background of the Valley’s history and people, the pictures of the story became more vivid.

⭐Trop de détails inutiles.

⭐Not found.

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