A New History Unveils the Exploitative Origins of the Tech Giants

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This is a review of the book <i>Palo Alto: A History of California, Capitalism, and the World</i>. From the article:<p>[The book] cuts past the deceit, examining the histories the fable dresses up in heroic garb. Doing for Palo Alto — population 70,000 — what Mike Davis’s classic “City of Quartz” did for Los Angeles, Harris reconsiders 200 years of history that many in the town would rather forget. Over more than 600 concussive pages, Harris narrates the town’s evolution and influence throughout the 19th and 20th centuries. He theorizes, above all, that it is defined by its distinctive approach to capitalism and profit, known as the “Palo Alto System”: a rapacious, violently exploitative mode of capitalism that generations of would-be moguls have perfected. “Palo Alto” is a skeptic’s record, a vital, critical demonstration of Northern California’s two centuries of mixing technology and cruelty for money.