The Know-It-Alls: The Rise of Silicon Valley as a Political Powerhouse and Social Wrecking Ball

Included in Backchannel’s (WIRED.com) Top Tech Books of 2017

An important book on the pervasive influence of Silicon Valley on our economy, culture and politics.
New York Times

How the titans of tech’s embrace of economic disruption and a rampant libertarian ideology is fracturing America and making it a meaner place

technology columnist Noam Cohen chronicles the rise of Silicon Valley as a political and intellectual force in American life. Beginning nearly a century ago and showcasing the role of Stanford University as the incubator of this new class of super geeks, Cohen shows how smart guys like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and Mark Zuckerberg fell in love with a radically individualistic ideal and then mainstreamed it. With these very rich men leading the way, unions, libraries, public schools, common courtesy, and even government itself have been pushed aside to make way for supposedly efficient market-based encounters via the Internet.

explains how these self-proclaimed geniuses failed this most important test of democracy.