Review: Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley, As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom

Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley, As Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom by Adam Fisher
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An excellent history of Silicon Valley, from its origins to the passing of Steve Jobs. 

I confess the format really turned me off at the beginning, and I was about to leave it unfinished. Especially with the audio version, this takes some getting used to. But after a while it sort of grows on you. 

Always interesting to hear about General Magic. I remember seeing a documentary on it which was fascinating. 

Also fascinating to read about The Well (The whole earth ‘lectronic link) as the first online community/social media. This group of misfits and hackers still decided real ID had to be used to sign up for The Well because “you have to own your words”. Seems like a gap in the market these days tbh. 

The predictions at the end of the book were a bit telling, however. When they talk about the Valley extending and making one big city past Berkely, it sounds a tad naive, having seen the cities empty out during Covid, and a race by many people to move to more isolated areas. 

Also the prediction of self-driving cars basically becoming RVs and making houses obsolete seems very US-centric. I like the idea of making houses obsolete, but I think the idea would be that with a phone+laptop you don't really need a car or anything else. I guess. 

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Review: Facebook: The Inside Story

Facebook: The Inside Story by Steven Levy
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Extremely interesting and well-researched book going through the history of Facebook (yes, including points from the Social Network movie). Much of it was a throwback to things I'd forgotten, like Causes, Animal Farm, Throwing Sheep, etc. 

Also interesting how you realize Eduardo Saverin was actually a very smart guy. For very little of the work he still ended up with a sizeable chunk, and was never bothered with any of Facebook's subsequent woes. 

All in all it was definitely worth the read. Also, you see the progression of Facebook and Zuckerberg and get a good sense of how Facebook has (or hasn't) kept up with everything going on. 

In essence, scandals aside (and there are scandals aplenty), Facebook hasn't really had any hits since the Like button and newsfeed. Everything since then has been a dud, from the Facebook phone (I had completely forgotten about that) to stories (taken from Instagram) to Libra. In fact, the main wins have been purchases, from Instagram to Whatsapp to Beluga (which it purchased, shut down, and turned into Messenger), to (possibly) Oculus. 

All of this is to say, now that Facebook has rebranded as Meta, it seems like Mark is staking everything on this, but we'll see how it goes. 

Seriously though. Every time I load up Instagram or Whatsapp and see that "Meta" logo at the bottom, I'm reminded of the Social Network movie, where they comment on the "A Mark Zuckerberg Production" at the bottom of each page.

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