Light Industry

“This dislocated sense of history suits a place that is often perceived less as historical landscape and more as a synecdoche for an entire way of life.”

“Whether it’s being spoken of with overwhelming contempt or feverish faith, critics and champions alike tend to talk about Silicon Valley as a condition rather than as a concrete geography. It isn’t a place that exists so much as something that happens to people and industries and other cities.”

“For critics, the wholesale export of Silicon Valley culture also means exporting a blithe libertarian ruthlessness cloaked in idealism and technocratic certainty.”

“Signifying global industries with geographical shorthand isn’t new: Wall Street means finance as surely as Hollywood means cinema—but history is the price of such abbreviations.”

“Studying Wall Street’s well-established origins in the slave trade can offer a clearer understanding of the dehumanizing and frequently racist origins of financial accumulation.”

“And a closer examination of the historical landscape of Silicon Valley relocates its corresponding ideology within the larger histories of industrial manufacturing, labor struggles, and environmental damage.”