El espíritu del mundo en Silicon Valley

After living for decades in Silicon Valley, near the university where he teaches literature, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, one of Europe's most respected intellectuals, realized that he resided in the center of the world. In that succession of anodyne, ramshackle buildings, similar to industrial warehouses, were the headquarters of Facebook, Apple or Google, the companies that condition current societies. What makes Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, Cupertino, or Mountain View special places? Why has so much talent and optimism been concentrated in that part of California? Why do characters like Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg or Bill Gates embody our time? What does that confluence of different accents, ambitious students and discreet millionaires who meet in a specific place to develop a technology that supposedly makes geography irrelevant, say about our time? Loaded with literary and philosophical scholarship, and with an enormous curiosity to understand where Silicon Valley is taking us, Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht reveals the most original look at the technological world. Because if a philosopher wants to understand the world, he must begin by looking at its center.