Commonwealth Club of San Francisco
September 25th, 2018
The
Bay Area is currently the jewel in the crown of capitalism—the tech
capital of the world and a gusher of wealth from the Silicon gold rush.
It has been generating jobs, spawning new innovation and spreading ideas
that are changing lives everywhere. It boasts of being the Left Coast,
the Greenest City and the best place for workers in the United States.
So, what could be wrong? There is a dark side of this success:
overheated bubbles and spectacular crashes; exploding inequality and
millions of underpaid workers; a boiling housing crisis, mass
displacement; severe environmental damage; a delusional tech elite and
complicity with the worst in American politics.
Richard Walker’s
sweeping account of the Bay Area in the age of the tech boom covers
many bases: the phenomenal concentration of IT in the Greater Silicon
Valley, the fabulous economic growth and the unbelievable wealth piling
up for some. All this is contrasted with the fate of the working class
earning poverty wages and struggling to keep their heads above water,
the greatest housing bubble in the United States, the local urban
geography turned inside out, the environmental impact of the boom, the
fantastical ideology of TechWorld and the political implications of the
tech-led transformation of the Bay Area.
