Postsocialism and the Tech Boom 2.0

The backyard of the East Bay Rats motorcycle club arena was beyond its saturation point with eager witnesses of the ‘Nihilists vs. Marxists’ boxing match slowly unfolding, a complementary event to the annual East Bay Anarchist Book Fair. While acknowledging heterogeneous histories of Bay Area racialized dispossession, this chapter situates the contemporary spatial, racial, and temporal transformations constitutive of the Tech Boom 2.0 through a post-socialist lens, focusing upon the material impact of the Cold War and postsocialist transition. Silicon Valley and early informatics bear well-established roots in Cold War technological infrastructure. Woven into histories of race and racism within the Valley are also those of Cold War-driven assimilation. Heralding the imaginary of clean, light industry, and imbricated in the grammar of liberal democracy, Silicon Valley corporations now penetrate the former Second World, often exploiting a technologically inclined labor force and cheaper rental and production costs.