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To what extent does the rise of Silicon Valley represent a replacement elite?
Periodically – usually whenever I read some indignant think-piece about how Big Tech is enabling the barbarian hordes of the populist right to destroy all that is Good and Holy – I ask myself if the increasing influence of Silicon Valley and associated industries represents an incipient shift in America’s ruling class. Rage-bait aside, I think its a worthwhile question. Changes in technology, economic, and socio-political organization are usually accompanied by some sort of shift in societal elites; when enough of these changes happen rapidly, we call it a revolution. I don’t know whether future historians will describe our own era as revolutionary, but it seems possible.
To answer this question, we first have to define the established ruling class. I hope to bypass the heated debates that topic inevitably prompts by sticking to some very broad and well-documented generalities.
From the end of the Civil War, the economic powerhouse of the country was in the North-East, [where industrial and financial capital was concentrated] (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/investing/022516/how-new-york-became-center-american-finance.asp).
The executive bureaucracy, since approximately the Progressive Era, has been dominated by technocrats characterized by an emphasis on formal educational credentials and, often, [association with elite educational institutions] (https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickhess/2024/11/01/is-the-ivy-league-really-a-pipeline-to-political-power/).
Ownership of the most influential nation-wide news media, whether broadcast or print, has been consolidated in the greater New York metropolitan area since the beginning of the twentieth century.
Taking those things together, I think you have a decent outline of an established American elite. Silicon Valley represents a potential challenge to all those actors. The growth of the tech sector potentially threatens established financial elites; the new media has established media practically in a full-blown panic attack, and the fear of under-credentialed STEMlord barbarians at the gate lurks in the background of practically every discussion about “institutions.”
I’m asking if anyone has actually done any real research on this topic, beyond the sort of casual “wordcels vs shape rotators” framework. How do Silicon Valley types differ educationally, demographically, ideologically? To what extent are they merging with versus competing with the current establishment? Etc I know [the Scholars Stage] (https://scholars-stage.org/the-silicon-valley-canon-on-the-paideia-of-the-american-tech-elite/) has done a little, but I’m looking for anything else anyone’s aware of, either research and analysis or just straight-up raw data.
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