tech industry — Bunk History

A Silicon Valley office building.

Better, Faster, Stronger

Two recent books illuminate the dark foundations of Silicon Valley.

by Ben Tarnoff via New York Review of Books on August 31, 2023

Drawing of a fighter plane.

The Real Developmental Engine

Throughout its history, the technology sector has been dependent on the federal budget.

by Jeannette Estruth via The Drift on February 22, 2023

Technology and California graphic.

Blame Palo Alto

From Stanford to Silicon Valley, a small town in California spread tech’s gospel of data and control.

by Scott Wasserman Stern via The New Republic on February 6, 2023

An oil rig on the ocean.

Spillovers from Oil Firms to U.S. Computing and Semiconductor Manufacturing

Smudging state–industry distinctions and retelling conventional narratives.

by Cyrus C. M. Mody via Reviews In American History on February 22, 2022

An public work space

The Idea of Work, From Below

Ideas about working from the employee perspective.

by Joel Suarez via Journal of the History of Ideas Blog on September 6, 2021

The Old Internet Died And We Watched And Did Nothing

It’s 2020 — do you know where your content is?

by Katie Notopoulos via BuzzFeed News on December 28, 2019

How Silicon Valley Broke the Economy

The question of how to fix the tech industry is now inseparable from the question of how to fix late 20th century capitalism.

by Adrian Chen via The Nation on October 14, 2019

The Failed Political Promise of Silicon Valley

Tech was meant to help us transcend our most intractable problems. What went wrong?

by Kim Phillips-Fein via The New Republic on September 27, 2019

Sign for the Silicon Valley Financial Center.

The Hidden History of How the Government Kick-Started Silicon Valley

It’s time to move past the tech sector’s creator myths.

by Margaret O'Mara, Hope Reese via OneZero on July 8, 2019

Detail from the newsletter "Interrupt," featuring a raised fist and the slogan "Computers serve the landlords."

Mainframe, Interrupted

A member of the 1960s-70s collective Computer People for Peace talks about the early days of tech worker organizing.

by Joan Greenbaum, Jen Kagan via Logic on January 7, 2019

An Alternative History of Silicon Valley Disruption

Three recent books challenge the tech industry's myths of self-reliance and prescience.

by Nitasha Tiku via Wired on October 22, 2018

Apple Macintosh computers sit on double decked manufacturing lines, 1984

The Undocumented Workers who Built Silicon Valley

Undocumented workers have been foundational to the rise of our most vaunted hub of innovative capitalism.

by Louis Hyman via Made By History on August 30, 2018

‘Crush Them’: An Oral History of the Lawsuit That Upended Silicon Valley

Twenty years ago, Microsoft tried to eliminate its competition in the race for the internet's future. The government had other ideas.

by Victor Luckerson via The Ringer on May 18, 2018

The Dot-Coms Were Better Than Facebook

Twenty years ago, another high-profile tech executive testified before Congress. It was a more innocent time.

by Ian Bogost via The Atlantic on April 13, 2018

The Tools of Silicon Valley

Silicon Valley’s sixty-year love affair with the word “tool.”

by Moira Weigel via The New Yorker on April 11, 2018

Picture of William B. Shockley (1910-1989)

Indigenous Circuits

While researching the history of racism in Silicon Valley, Lisa Nakamura is surprised to discover the Navajo Nation's role in the creation of the tech industry.

by Lisa Nakamura via Computer History Museum on January 2, 2014

Illustration by Ben Kothe / The Atlantic

The Perils of ‘Design Thinking’

How did the concept become the solution to society’s most deeply entrenched problems?

by Celine Nguyen via The Atlantic on June 24, 2025

Friedrich Hayek

Hokey Cowboy: Is Hayek to Blame?

Hayek suspected that nothing about the vindication of neoliberalism was likely to be straightforward.

by David Runciman via London Review of Books on May 22, 2025

Aerial view of Oakland.

The Future Happens in Oakland First. That’s a Cautionary Tale for Global Cities

International trade boomed with the city’s early adoption of technological and economic changes, but Black neighborhoods became ‘sacrifice zones.’

by Lois Beckett, Alexis C. Madrigal via The Guardian on March 22, 2025

Young people running through the streets of Taipei; a middle aged businessman in Houston.

Texas’ Hotbed of Taiwanese Nationalism

For decades, Houston families like mine have helped keep the flame of independence burning.

by Josephine Lee via Texas Observer on November 25, 2024

Call of Duty: Pentagon Ops

Inside the weird synergies that launched the videogaming industry—and made the Pentagon fantasies in Call of Duty its stock in trade.

by Jesse Robertson via The Nation on October 24, 2024

Soldiers in combat gear stand by an advertisement for "America's Army," a military strategy game from 2002.

Video Games Are a Key Battleground in the Propaganda War

When video games went mainstream, the Pentagon realized their potential as a promotional tool, spending hundreds of millions of dollars on war-based games.

by Marijam Did via Jacobin on October 13, 2024

White settlers traveling west in Conestoga wagons.

America as Filibuster Society

American expansionism goes beyond territory.

by Nick Burns via American Affairs on August 20, 2024

Elon Musk's face edited onto Apple advertisements.

A Bullshit Genius

On Walter Isaacson’s biographical project.

by Oscar Schwartz via The Drift on March 12, 2024

What Centuries of Common Law Can Teach Us About Regulating Social Media

Today, tech platforms, including social media, are the new common carriers.

by Ganesh Sitaraman, Morgan Ricks via LPE Project on February 26, 2024

Kara Swisher wearing headphones and writing in a notebook near a computer.

Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media

A front-row seat to a slow-moving catastrophe. How tech both helps and hurts our world.

by Kara Swisher via Intelligencer on February 7, 2024

Lined-paper illustration of Tom Watson Jr. and Sr.

The Rise and Fall of the ‘IBM Way’

What the tech pioneer can, and can’t, teach us.

by Deborah Cohen via The Atlantic on December 13, 2023

Wikimedia Foundation servers.

Dead Links

Maintaining the internet data of dead people.

by Tamara Kneese via Public Books on October 31, 2023

Steve Jobs with Apple II computer.

The Birth of the Personal Computer

A new history of the Apple II charts how computers became unavoidable fixtures of our daily lives.

by Kyle Chayka via The New Yorker on May 18, 2023

1970s commercial airplane flying over a mountain range

How 1970s California Created the Modern World

What happened in California in the 1970s played an outsized role in creating the world we live in today – both in the United States and globally.

by Francis J. Gavin via Engelsberg Ideas on April 3, 2023

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