Malcolm Harris

A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

Palo Alto

Boothby

When I say haunted, I don't mean haunted in the ghost sense, not exactly, or at least not necessarily. We use the word all the time without referring to actual phantoms. We can be haunted by a loss or a traumatic event or even by that dumb thing we said that one time. Haunting happens when a past action won't go away, won't stay past. But the word usually refers to a relation between the living and the dead: There's an imbalance between the realms, something stuck where it isn't supposed to be. Haunting is homologous with theft, which also involves things being where they shouldn't, but we're not talking about a stolen wallet; it takes more than that to disturb hell. What haunts are the kinds of large historical crimes that, once committed, can never truly be set right.

Jayme Cochrane

The first 1/3 is a genuinely great historical read of what led to modern Palo Alto. Gets a big convoluted in the middle as global events are repeatedly tied back to Silicon Valley (with mixed results).

Last 1/3 should just be called “big tech is bad” - the strings holding the arguments together are very taught and fragile. The concluding chapter’s argument (how to “fix” Palo Alto) is baffling, makes little sense and is given with hardly any explanation. Disappointing.

Palo Alto A History of California, Capitalism, and the World

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