Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley

Valley of Genius by Adam Fisher has the subtitle “The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley, as Told by the Hackers, Founders, and Freaks Who Made It Boom”, which accurately covers both the book’s contents and its style. It provides an oral history of Silicon Valley through interviews with the people at the center of the tech industry’s rise. It covers companies like Apple, Google, Facebook, eBay, and Netscape - as well as publications like Whole Earth Catalog, Wired, and The WELL. It’s a fascinating collection of insider perspectives, even if the interview format doesn’t always work for me.

If you’ve seen my reading history, you already know that I love reading tech history and this was no exception. Despite having lived through most of this history, it was fascinating to read the personal takes from so many of the insiders. And I learned plenty of new stuff too, for example, how influential Alan Kay (whom I knew primarily from his Dynabook and Smalltalk work at Xerox PARC) had been to Apple, and how many things started in San Francisco’s South Park micro-neighborhood (I lived around the corner for a few years, yet didn’t know this part of its history). So: lots of new stuff mixed in with reminders of why I love tech and how it came to be.

What I didn’t love is the “group interview” style most of the book uses, where the characters build on top of (or against) what someone else has just said. The (what I assume were) individual interviews have, of course, been heavily edited to fit each chapter’s topic and the narrative, but it still felt at times like reading the transcript of a modern TV show. I’d have preferred longer takes from each individual.

I also would have cut the last two chapters from the book. The second-to-last chapter has the interviewees speculate on the future, and it just didn’t do the topic - or the people - much justice. The last chapter covers the death and memorial service for Steve Jobs, and it just did not fit into the story at all.

Still, it’s a good bit of history about how tech came to Silicon Valley - and how it’s continued to emanate from there.