South Africa and Silicon Valley: From Gold Mines to Elon Musk
A Conversation with Dr Tim Karayiannides
Hello from me, currently en route to Helsinki (in the clouds, for a workshop on the cloud!).
This week’s episode is a goodie. I talked to Dr. Tim Karayiannides, a research fellow at Emmanuel College, Cambridge University about his recent article on the connections between South Africa and Silicon Valley. While Elon Musk’s childhood in apartheid in South Africa is sometimes cited as an explanation for his far-right views, there is in fact a much deeper history between Californian and South Africa — from exporting gold mining engineers, to the establishment of technical universities, computer engineers who joined finance, to the histories of eugenics and racial capitalism. It’s definitely a good travel or commute listen, wherever you are going!
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Leaving Twitter? Follow me on Bluesky at @alinau27.bsky.social.
Reading From the Episode:
By Tim:
The Mine Dumps of Silicon Valley
Other Reading:Malcom Harris’s Palo Alto
Susannah Glickman, Corporate Capture in California
Article of the Week
