silicon valley

The Beginning of the End of Big Tech
26 Nov

The Beginning of the End of Big Tech

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Next year will be Big Tech’s finale. Critique of Big Tech is now common sense, voiced by a motley spectrum that unites opposing political parties, mainstream pundits, and even tech titans such as the VC powerhouse Y Combinator, which is singing in harmony with giants like a16z in proclaiming fealty to “little tech” against the centralized power of incumbents.Why the fall from grace? One reason is that the collateral consequences of the current Big Tech business model are too obvious to ignore. The list is old hat by now: centralization, surveillance, information control. It goes on, and it’s not hypothetical.…
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The Red Elephant in the Room at AfroTech
21 Nov

The Red Elephant in the Room at AfroTech

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Under a Trump administration, the outcomes for 2025 appear inevitably bleaker. He’s promised to invest in an economy that is anti-woke, bolstering his cabinet with agitators—such as Brendan Carr, his choice for chair of the Federal Communications Commission—that have promised to end DEI. Project 2025, the 900-page conservative policy agenda Trump is likely to base much of his governing on, takes aim at organizations that employ “racial classifications and quotas” and pledges to rescind an executive order that calls for federal contractors to guarantee equal opportunity. (And big tech companies were already cutting DEI programs, even without the threats of…
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Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?
21 Nov

Is Silicon Valley Actually Libertarian?

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Lauren Goode: It sounds like you're a little bit aligned with the successful tech entrepreneurs who were surveyed by the junior college in Palo Alto in terms of being a liberaltarian.Michael Calore: No, I go further left than that, I would say.Zoë Schiffer: He sounds like maybe he's Yang Gang.Lauren Goode: Oh, the Yang Gang. I interviewed Andrew Yang once.Michael Calore: Andrew Yang, he was one of the first big vocal proponents of universal basic income in the political sphere, wasn't he?Lauren Goode: Yes, he was indeed.Michael Calore: Well, I don't know anything else about him, so I can't say…
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How to Not Die in Silicon Valley
14 Nov

How to Not Die in Silicon Valley

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Lauren Goode: Zoë, you had vegan pizza the other night. You said it was pretty good.Zoë Schiffer: I did. I did, and I read a really, really scary article written by Annie Lowrey in The Atlantic about dairy farming, and it radicalized me for at least 24 hours. I was on oat milk. Thank you. I don't want a prize.Lauren Goode: Mike, how long have you been vegan for now?Michael Calore: I don't know. 800 years.Lauren Goode: Nice. Our resident long-living man on this show.Michael Calore: I've been fully vegan for about five years, and I've been vegetarian ever since…
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Big Tech Wants You Back in the Office
07 Nov

Big Tech Wants You Back in the Office

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Lauren Goode: Oh, really?Zoë Schiffer: Yes.Lauren Goode: I did not have that experience on Caltrain.Zoë Schiffer: Well, you weren't reading Infinite Jest on the Caltrain, were you now?. That was my catfishing technique.Lauren Goode: What was your worst commute, Mike?Michael Calore: There was a period of time in the early 2000s when I was living out in the Sunset district of San Francisco. Which there's a couple of trains that can bring you downtown, but they take an hour. And it was pre-mobile technology, so we had Discman Walkman players, portable CD players, so you had to bring a little…
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What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan
01 Nov

What an ‘Airbnbopoly’ Game Says About Silicon Valley’s Standoff With Lina Khan

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Four years ago, one of Vice President Kamala Harris’ top donors—the billionaire cofounder of LinkedIn Reid Hoffman—celebrated the IPO of Airbnb, a company he was heavily invested in, by fashioning Monopoly boards where the game’s “jail” space is replaced by “government regulation.”Since Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, many billionaire tech investors have come out of the woodwork to support her campaign. While they often tout Harris as a business-friendly politician, they’ve been vocal in their dislike of Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan’s antitrust agenda. Hoffman is one of the most influential donors in that group. He has donated…
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Introducing WIRED’s Flagship Podcast, ‘Uncanny Valley’
31 Oct

Introducing WIRED’s Flagship Podcast, ‘Uncanny Valley’

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Silicon Valley has been an epicenter of global innovation for decades. But the Valley, and its associated personalities, companies, and trends, has never been home to more undiluted power than it is today.Think about it: Elon Musk, among the world’s richest people, is essentially underwriting US presidential candidates while subsidiaries of his interstellar-centric company SpaceX snap up more orbital real estate with every satellite launch; despite Facebook’s decline as a habitual platform for many Americans, Meta’s user base worldwide continues to grow, ticking ever-closer to the stunning 4 billion mark; and in the past two years, Silicon Valley startups and…
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A High-Profile Geneticist Is Launching a Fusion-Power Moonshot
25 Oct

A High-Profile Geneticist Is Launching a Fusion-Power Moonshot

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Eric Lander is a Big Science heavyweight. A geneticist, molecular biologist, and mathematician, he led the International Human Genome Project and is founding director of the powerful Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard. His countless accolades include a MacArthur “genius” grant and 14 honorary doctorates. When Joe Biden became president, he tapped Lander to be his science adviser and the head of the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Lander lost the job because of charges that he bullied subordinates, but he went on to head a nonprofit organization called Science for America.So what is he doing running a Silicon…
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