Silicon Valley as Existential Battlefield in ‘The Portable Veblen’ and ‘Private Citizens’
The Gold Rush of 1849 might be to blame for one of the first big surges in California’s population, but it wasn’t until 20 years ago that the number spiked to what it is today, thanks to the place becoming a destination for anyone who speaks the green-on-black language of computers. Silicon Valley became the new Sutter’s Mill, young folks flocking to and from Stanford University and its surrounding suburbs to create an economic dome built on emerging technology and ideas. The ideas in question were sometimes so shoddy that they nearly collapsed the region in the mid-’90s, only to be born again in the oughts in the form of startups, a trend run so rampant that it’s overflown to pop culture, infecting TV, movies, and now, finally, the novel.…Read More
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