Overall: a valuable contribution to contextualizing the miasma of historical developments generally shorthanded as "tech", and I also hope far from the final word on any of its subjects. The pandemic meant that Harris took a largely desk-research approach to writing this book and while it is voluminously footnoted, it's not based in archival research or extensive interviews. This is fine for what Harris is trying to do, which is very much a big world-systems analysis, but it also means there are some things he sort of glosses in ways that historians will probably find annoying.

As someone who grew up in this part of California I do wish it had hewed its narrative more explicitly to Palo Alto/the peninsula of the Bay Area as a place--most readers won't miss the absence of niche local detail but some of the strongest parts of the book are the ones that ground their argument in the actual local site. It also would have made his final chapter a bit stronger I think. All in all, still glad it was written and glad I read it.