The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball

(Hardback)

Available Formats

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

Included in Backchannels (WIRED.com) Top Tech Books of 2017

An important book on the pervasive influence of Silicon Valley on our economy, culture and politics.
New York Times

How the titans of tech's embrace of economic disruption and a rampant libertarian ideology is fracturing America and making it a meaner place

technology columnist Noam Cohen chronicles the rise of Silicon Valley as a political and intellectual force in American life. Beginning nearly a century ago and showcasing the role of Stanford University as the incubator of this new class of super geeks, Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet.

explains how these self-proclaimed geniuses failed this most important test of democracy.

Reviews

Praise for The Know-It-Alls:
Noam Cohens The Know-It-Alls provides a provocative and illuminating examination of Silicon Valley. Using profiles of its core digital capitalist giants and the immense political, economic and cultural power they have quickly come to possess, Cohen raises troubling questions about how this can possibly square with a fair, decent, humane, and democratic society. This immensely readable book should be mandatory reading.
Robert W. McChesney, author of Digital Disconnect

Individualism is a big part of what makes America greatuntil it becomes a euphemism for selfishness and arrogance among lucky winners who prefer to believe that luck and other people had nothing to do with their success. The Know-It-Alls is a terrific case study of some of the unreckoned costs of the digital revolution, and how one piece of the American idea threatens to overwhelm the others.
Kurt Andersen

The Know-It-Alls is a fascinating intellectual profile of the people who have increasingly come to rule our world. With precision and skill, Noam Cohen tweaks the pretensions of a handful of tech oligarchs, whose self-styled project to better our lives results in little more than a power grab at our economy and our democracy. As Americas center of gravity inexorably shifts to Silicon Valley, and the original vision of a decentralized Internet of personal expression gets drowned in a sea of commerce and advertising, Ill be turning to Cohens insights into the profiteers responsible again and again.
David Dayen, author of Chain of Title

Author Bio

Noam Cohen covered the influence of the Internet on the larger culture for the New York Times, where he wrote the Link by Link column, beginning in 2007. He lives in Brooklyn with his family. This is his first book.