In 2022, a 17-year-old computer wizard named Theo Baker entered Stanford University. Besotted with idealism, he’d come to California believing that Stanford could enable him to make the world a better place. As a “hobby,” he volunteered for the Stanford Daily student newspaper....
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In 1998, three ambitious Silicon Valley entrepreneurs established a startup called PayPal. These three hustlers—Max Levchin, Peter Thiel, and Luke Nosek—later merged with Elon Musk’s company and enlisted eight or nine others. Together, they became the PayPal Mafia. The company survived the...
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We Americans have long believed that the US military is the most advanced and most capable in the world. But in some respects that’s no longer the case. For example, China’s new, nuclear-armed hypersonic missiles could destroy in an instant the USS Gerald R. Ford, the US Navy’s...
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Name just about any billionaire in the tech industry, and Kara Swisher is sure to know him. In fact, she’s probably interviewed him several times onstage at her events or her podcasts or for her New York Times column, the Wall Street Journal, or one of the other publications she’s...
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Estimated reading time: 5 minutes Humor is a funny thing. What you find hilarious might leave me cold or even offend me deeply. And my own sense of humor, which some have found quirky, can make me laugh when no one else does. So, I’m prepared to believe that you’ll think Daniel...
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When we think of surveillance so pervasive that it seems impossible to hide, most Americans’ minds turn to today’s China. Certainly, the Chinese have surpassed past totalitarian regimes such as the Soviet Union and East Germany in tracking the actions—and thoughts—of their citizens....
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I’ve spent more than half my life in business, engaged in founding or leading a number of small companies. So it’s only natural that I should read a good deal about economic and business history. Here, I’ve listed more than sixty of the best books about the history of business...
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Everybody in the world of technology talks about the Metaverse. But no two people among them seem to agree on what it is, how it will be built, who if anyone will control it, and when it will become a reality. Tech investor Matthew Ball sets out to address this problem in The Metaverse: And How It...
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Estimated reading time: 6 minutes As tech companies go, PayPal is a piker compared to the bold-faced names of the industry. Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Facebook, not to mention Tencent and Alibaba in China, all dwarf PayPal on all the metrics used to measure success in Silicon Valley....
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Prominent and knowledgeable people including Bill Gates and Stephen Hawking have been warning us for years about the danger of artificial general intelligence. They envision a point at which AI will surpass the cognitive abilities of the smartest human and start becoming even smarter at an...
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Memoirs and autobiographies are often about score-settling. But that’s not the case with Uncanny Valley, Anna Wiener’s insightful and revealing account of her years working for three tech startups in Silicon Valley. You might expect to know at least the names of the companies where she...
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Today innovation is customarily associated with the digital revolution and Silicon Valley. Up to a point, that’s fitting, since how most of us in the world’s wealthy nations now live our lives has changed in major ways as a result of work done in what is generally called the tech industry. But...
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It’s difficult not to be alive and aware anywhere in the world today without recognizing the impact of Silicon Valley on the way we live our lives. Half a century ago the Santa Clara Valley that is the heart of what we know today as Silicon Valley was purely agricultural. Orchards of apricots,...
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The first computer programmer was a woman. Ada Lovelace, Lord Byron’s daughter, wrote code in 1842-43 for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, a computer that was never built. And a century later, when the first digital computers finally came into existence, the programmers were mostly...
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If you’re looking for an expert to confirm your fears about killer robots, the grey goo problem, or robots taking all our jobs, you’re in the wrong place. Amy Webb began her career as a reporter for the Wall Street Journal. She has become a widely respected futurist, author, and...
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The Curse of Bigness highlights one of the most significant policy questions facing American society. The author, Columbia University law professor Tim Wu, insists it’s time to restore America’s lost commitment to the antitrust legislation passed in the late nineteenth and early...
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Bad Blood is a cautionary tale about the corrosive effects of corporate power in Silicon Valley. It’s also vivid evidence for the invaluable role played by investigative journalists, whose work constitutes one of the few checks available in our society on corporate misbehavior. The...
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Google “books about artificial intelligence,” and you’ll find a slew of them. Amazon lists 286. Computer scientists, journalists, science fiction authors, and other observers have written on the topic, sometimes insightfully, sometimes not. I’ve read nearly two dozen of...
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The secret military history of the Internet comes to light in a powerful new book. It’s well known that the Internet was birthed by the Pentagon. Originally called the ARPANET, the name reflected its origin in the military’s Advanced Research Projects Agency created late in the...
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Any casual reader whose knowledge about Silicon Valley comes from the headlines or the news online might get the impression that Steve Jobs and the Google and Facebook guys invented the place. Obviously, this is far from true. But even more serious coverage tends to focus on a handful of...
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Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review,
with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review,
with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.
Mysteries & Thrillers Tuesday includes my latest mystery and thriller book review, with links to other science fiction content.
Nonfiction Wednesday includes my latest nonfiction book review, with links to other nonfiction content.
The Weekly includes summaries and links to all the previous week’s three to five book reviews, including some that don’t appear in any of the other newsletters.