Vaporware, Inc.: How Silicon Valley Sells the Future to Control the Present

A critical reexamination of techno-optimism’s empty promises, and how the lessons of the past can help us regain control of our future.

"David Karpf has done us a great service by clearly and succinctly articulating the hollow rhetoric at the heart of Big Tech’s power. Vaporware, Inc. is equal parts funny and infuriating—I devoured most of it in a day. Let’s regulate Silicon Valley and tax these tech barons already!" —Adam Becker, author of More Everything Forever

For thirty years, techno-optimists have promised dramatic technological innovation as long as we—the public, journalists, regulators, and policymakers—keep out of the way. The results have been great for Silicon Valley but haven’t gone so well for everyone else. They promise to stop climate change while building resource-intensive data centers, evade governmental regulations at our expense, and watch wealth inequality soar as they enjoy a permissive tax code. Venture capitalists and the companies they fund have amassed wealth, status, and political power, but their bold pronouncements have amounted to little more than vaporware.

In Vaporware, Inc., political scientist and tech commentator David Karpf looks back at the history of the digital future to understand the ideological project of techno-optimism, and why it has gone so wrong for the rest of us. With sharp wit and keen insight, Karpf debunks the foundational myths of the techno-optimists and traces how tech billionaires amassed power by selling the idea of the future. Eye-opening and essential, Vaporware, Inc. is a critical reappraisal of how Silicon Valley works and how we can make it work better.