To me, Silicon Valley is a confusing beast. I'm not sure if this is remaining liberalism but there are some things about it (on the surface level) that I find admirable: it's generally science-positive and is a beacon of intellectualism in the US, even if tech is not your cup of tea I like the idea of some people being in the "problem solving business", and if I must participate in capitalism then working for a company that helps with sustainability in SV doesn't sound too bad. Not ideal, but leagues more tolerable than working on an oil field.
However, this facade crumbles at even the quickest glance and it sometimes almost becomes just as nakedly reactionary as the oil and gas industry. Elon Musk is practically the poster child of Silicon Valley and was a lib that just needed one scratch to give up the ghost and go full fash. Silicon Valley is literally acting like an Ayn Rand villain. Silicon Valley has also practically soured my attitudes towards technology and some of that can be blamed on pretty much all new "innovations" just being inventing a new form of landlordism. Even many of the people in the supposed blue city are complete and utter fash, the whole thing feels like it's permanently an 80s Wall Street movie but with tech.
Is there like any books that can better explain Silicon Valley and what it actually stands for?
Who owns the Future by Jaron Lanier and Listen, Liberal: Whatever Happened to the Party of the People by Thomas Frank which references Who Owns The Future and puts it in the context of neoliberalism in the Democratic Party kind of a 1, 2 punch.
Lanier is an anti-socialist nerd, but he understands Silicon Valley thinking, being one of the original of them. His solution that he posits in this book is laughable to any of us, but is the thought behind things like NFTs and the drive to tokenize all our data on to the Blockchain.