Part II of a conversation with well-known historian of technology and American politics, Margaret O'Mara, about her essay "The High-Tech Revolution and American Capitalism." In this episode, O'Mara explains the ways in which the rise of big tech coincided in symptomatic and instrumental ways with the fall of the New Deal order. Topics covered include: the reasons that big tech's entrepreneurs, engineers, and corporate executives were blind to the ways that they had benefitted from the New Deal state; the emergence of the Silicon Valley lobby; the Atari Democrats; the ways in which Big Tech was useful to the Reagan Revolution; and the lessons that the role of Big Tech in the fall of the New Deal order might hold for the Green New Deal. References: A New York Times op-ed by O'Mara on the reasons that Silicon Valley is not going away: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/28/opinion/silicon-valley-exodus.html Another of O'Mara's New York Times op-ed on the econic incentives that feul the social media rage machine: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/03/opinion/election-2020-facebook-twitter.html A Washington Post op-ed in which O'Mara discusses the role of the federal government in helping to build Silicon Valley: https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/07/17/silicon-valley-portrays-itself-hotbed-free-market-enterprise-new-book-explains-how-government-helped-build-it/ A Foreign Policy opinion piece in which O'Mara provides some advice to global planners trying to build their own versions of Silicon Valley: https://foreignpolicy.com/2010/08/06/dont-try-this-at-home/ Special Guest: Margaret O'Mara.
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