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

By Noam Cohen

The Beginning: a Stanford University lab embarked on an idealistic quest to create an artificial intelligence that would benefit society, perhaps even profit the makers. There were few women or minorities in the department and its head rejected the very idea of authority, but really – what could go wrong?

Now: more and more aspects of our lives are being dictated by a tiny, unaccountable elite, a breakaway sect of free-market libertarians who are determined to bypass government and enrich themselves at the expense of society. Pioneers and self-proclaimed geniuses like Jeff Bezos, Peter Thiel, Reid Hoffman and Mark Zuckerberg have not only made the Internet what it is today – their impact on the world has been profound.

This is a history of Silicon Valley through its eleven greatest entrepreneurs and a damning indictment of the greed, bias and outright prejudice of an industry that is fracturing America and taking the rest of us with it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Release date: Jan 4, 2018
• ISBN: 9781786073686

Reviews for The Know-It-Alls

[pdcread · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Where would you be without the internet? You are reading this review on a device of some kind, and if you are like most people then you will have shopped recently on it, chatted with someone on a social website, done a little research, and faffed around quite a lot no doubt. It is now one of life's essentials along with power and water, and if you have teenagers then you know for them it is their lifeblood.

There are a number of people who have been in the driving of this profound change to the way that society functions now, Berners-Lee was the man who created the world wide web that sits on the internet, but this book is concerned with some of the greatest entrepreneurs who have made their mark in cyberspace and the world.

There is a chapter with an interesting profile of eleven of the most influential individuals who have shaped the web that we use today, including Jeff Bezos of Amazon, Sergey Brin and Larry Page of Google, Reid Hoffman of LinkedIn and Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook as well as one of the first, Marc Andreessen creator of Netscape (remember that?). They have all become rich from their creations, but though the money is important to these men, and they are all men, , they are driven by the desire to be number one in their sphere and to form the world around them as they see fit, demanding that freedom of speech and individuality should have precedence over regulations and laws. As much as these men dislike and abhor oversight and control of big government, the way that they run the companies is not dissimilar to that of a dictatorship.

These websites now rule our lives, they have permeated our lives in so many ways and we now rely on them. They have countless reams data acquired from us legitimately and surreptitiously, as with a lot of these you are the product. Given the continued fallout from the Cambridge Analytical and Facebook, this is a subject that will have a keener eye turned on it in the coming months. I thought that the conclusion was very sparse as he could have been much more critical of the major players. It could have also had more to say about the future of the web, for example, what happens after Google? However, it was an interesting start to a conversation that has a long way to go.

[davidwineberg · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Why we need artificial intelligenceSo Silicon Valley moguls are essentially all privileged white male superegos, living the life of racism, sexism and ageism, and of course, obscene wealth. This is not news, but Noam Cohen has put together an alternate history of the computer era, bent at this angle. It makes for uncomfortable reading, meaning, it’s effective.The main locus is Stanford University, which turned itself into an industry-promoting school in the 1930s as a way of differentiating itself. It began with Hewlett-Packard, which paid off big for the university, and it has never looked back. Venture capitalists prowl the campus, hiring students, handing out checks for ideas and helping with business plans for a large piece of the action. Students quit early to go into well-funded startups. The school takes only the highest scorers, because that’s all that matters. Interviews are based on intelligence quizzes and games, not personalities or values. And the old boys’ network means once you’re in, the offers keep coming. For life. (Everyone else is over the hill by age 32).The chapters are biographies, showing the growth of greed and power and arrogance of each person. A couple of them are really quite revolting, but probably no more so than in any group of people. What Cohen posits they have in common is that their money and power make them know-it-alls, with outsized influence and voices. They try to make up for it with ill-conceived plans like Zuckerberg’s misguided donation to education in Newark, or Gates’ donations to eradicate polio – at the expense of progress against anything else. They see themselves at the front of the line because of their money, so what they say goes.Then they can spout crackpot concepts like you are your own startup of one, and the poor will be uplifted if only they had access to facebook, and India was better off as a British colony. They fling their wisdom without concern, because their success makes them right. It is not a pleasant scenario.Cohen thinks people should be uplifted by people, by actual contact and relations, and that government’s purpose is to facilitate, promote and enable such qualities of life. The moguls often felt the same way - until the first check came in.David Wineberg