Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen

Silicon Valley has emerged as the key metaphor of the innovation-led economic development in the 21st century. As the Valley’s technology monopolies and utopias expand, there is a growing need for critical histories that help to ground and contextualize the futures that are spreading from San Franci...

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Main Author: Antti Tarvainen
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Pluto Journals 2022-02-01
Series:Prometheus
Online Access:https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/prometheus.37.4.0371
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author Antti Tarvainen
author_facet Antti Tarvainen
author_sort Antti Tarvainen
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description Silicon Valley has emerged as the key metaphor of the innovation-led economic development in the 21st century. As the Valley’s technology monopolies and utopias expand, there is a growing need for critical histories that help to ground and contextualize the futures that are spreading from San Francisco Bay. In this review essay, I suggest that a settler-colonial approach offers interesting possibilities for the creation of such histories. To demonstrate how such an approach works, I develop a settler-colonial reading of Margaret O’Mara’s recent book The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (2019). By critically analysing the key metaphors in O’Mara’s celebrated book, the global and violent face of the Valley becomes visible. The settler-colonial approach, I conclude, offers one possible analytical approach to breaking the stranglehold of America-centred understanding typical of the histories of Valley.
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spelling doaj.art-3a9bbd608dbb41f497fb5516962d30092023-05-03T15:28:17ZengPluto JournalsPrometheus0810-90281470-10302022-02-0137437138110.13169/prometheus.37.4.0371Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti TarvainenAntti TarvainenSilicon Valley has emerged as the key metaphor of the innovation-led economic development in the 21st century. As the Valley’s technology monopolies and utopias expand, there is a growing need for critical histories that help to ground and contextualize the futures that are spreading from San Francisco Bay. In this review essay, I suggest that a settler-colonial approach offers interesting possibilities for the creation of such histories. To demonstrate how such an approach works, I develop a settler-colonial reading of Margaret O’Mara’s recent book The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America (2019). By critically analysing the key metaphors in O’Mara’s celebrated book, the global and violent face of the Valley becomes visible. The settler-colonial approach, I conclude, offers one possible analytical approach to breaking the stranglehold of America-centred understanding typical of the histories of Valley.https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/prometheus.37.4.0371
spellingShingle Antti Tarvainen
Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen
Prometheus
title Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen
title_full Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen
title_fullStr Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen
title_full_unstemmed Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen
title_short Margaret O’Mara, The Code. Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America reviewed by Antti Tarvainen
title_sort margaret o mara the code silicon valley and the remaking of america reviewed by antti tarvainen
url https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/prometheus.37.4.0371
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