Book cover for Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism, by Wendy Liu

Former insider turned critic Wendy Liu busts the myths of the tech industry, and offers a galvanising argument for why and how we must reclaim technology's potential for the public good.

ADVANCE PRAISE

“Lucid, probing and urgent … optimistic about the emancipatory potential of tech and scathing about the industry that has harnessed it for bleak and self-serving ends.”

— Naomi Klein, author of On Fire: The Burning Case for a Green New Deal

“Technologists all over the world are coming to grips with the ethical implications of their work and realizing that no amount of code can substitute for political engagement. Liu's memoir is a roadmap for that journey of realization (it helps that she's a sprightly, witty writer).”

“Astute, accessible, and driven by the author’s wealth of personal insight … a riveting read and a compelling contribution to contemporary debates. I devoured it in a single sitting.”

“Politically-engaged and rigorously self-reflective … calls not just for the eradication of tech culture as we know it, but for the radical reinvention of innovation, work, and automation in the name of the collective interest … an assured debut which deserves to find a wide audience.”

'Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism'

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Innovation. Meritocracy. The possibility of overnight success. What's not to love about Silicon Valley?

These days, it’s hard to be unambiguously optimistic about the growth-at-all-costs ethos of the tech industry. Public opinion is souring in the wake of revelations about Cambridge Analytica, Theranos, and the workplace conditions of Amazon workers or Uber drivers. It’s becoming clear that the tech industry’s promised “innovation” is neither sustainable nor always desirable.

Abolish Silicon Valley is both a heartfelt personal story about the wasteful inequality of Silicon Valley, and a rallying call to engage in the radical politics needed to upend the status quo. Going beyond the idiosyncrasies of the individual founders and companies that characterise the industry today, Wendy Liu delves into the structural factors of the economy that gave rise to Silicon Valley as we know it. Ultimately, she proposes a more radical way of developing technology, where innovation is conducted for the benefit of society at large, and not just to enrich a select few.


Interviews and media coverage

Podcast and speaking appearances listed separately - see this page

About the author

Wendy Liu is a software engineer and startup founder who left the tech industry to pursue a master's degree in inequality from the London School of Economics. She has written about technology and politics for Logic Magazine, Dissent, and Tribune, and has been featured in articles on tech worker organising for The Atlantic and CNBC.

She lives in San Francisco.

Her personal website can be found at dellsystem.me.

About the publisher

Repeater Books is dedicated to the creation of a new reality. The landscape of twenty-first-century arts and letters is faded and inert, riven by fashionable cynicism, egotistical self-reference and a nostalgia for the recent past. Repeater intends to add its voice to those movements that wish to enter history and assert control over its currents, gathering together scattered and isolated voices with those who have already called for an escape from Capitalist Realism. Our desire is to publish in every sphere and genre, combining vigorous dissent and a pragmatic willingness to succeed where messianic abstraction and quiescent co-option have stalled: abstention is not an option: we are alive and we don’t agree.

For publicity requests, contact enquiries@repeaterbooks.com.