ABSTRACT
Silicon Valley developed on the back of prior industrial investment, which was subsequently reinforced by government and university co-operation and support. Arguably, there were two ‘inter-related economies’ of Silicon Valley. The first being the circuit, computer, computer networking and software companies and other electronics-based industries and the university departments which interact with them. The second being the network of venture capital, legal and other firms that have grown up around them, which together form an interlocking ecosystem. For Mark Zuckerberg, seeking to manage charges of political bias from Republicans, Silicon Valley itself is ‘an extremely left-leaning place’. Silicon Valley’s discourse of permissionless innovation, coined by Google’s chief Internet evangelist Vincent Cerf, has been adopted by right-wing think-tanks as a counter to the ‘precautionary principle’ underpinning so much of environmental and health policy.
