W. Patrick McCray

W. Patrick McCray is a professor of history at the University of California, Santa Barbara and the author of README: A Bookish History of Computing from Electronic Brains to Everything Machines (2025). He currently holds the Kluge Chair of Technology and Society at the Library of Congress.

Articles

From Domination to Derision
W. Patrick McCray surveys Matthew Wisnioski’s description of the United States’ evolution—and devolution—into a nation obsessed with innovation.
W. Patrick McCrayOct 16
- Science & Technology
- History
Dirty Digits and “Pleasant Landscapes”: On Jason A. Heppler’s “Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism”
After reading Jason A. Heppler’s “Silicon Valley and the Environmental Inequalities of High-Tech Urbanism,” Patrick McCray decides that Silicon Valley should really be called Arsenic Valley.
W. Patrick McCrayApr 23, 2024
The Bargaining Chips Are … Chips: On Chris Miller’s “Chip War”
Historian of technology Patrick McCray describes Chris Miller’s “Chip War” as “an account of how chips became a strategically vital resource whose importance is overlooked at our peril.” Miller has placed his own chips on this point. His bet has largely paid off, according to McCray.
W. Patrick McCrayOct 4, 2022
On Floating Upstream
In a review of Markoff’s biography of Stewart Brand, W. Patrick McCray notes that Brand’s ability to recognize and cleave to power explains a great deal of his career.
W. Patrick McCrayMar 22, 2022
- Science & Technology
No Geniuses Here
W. Patrick McCray praises Eric Hintz’s new book on America’s independent inventors in the 20th century.
W. Patrick McCrayOct 21, 2021
- Science & Technology
Silicon Valley’s Hidden Voices
W. Patrick McCray lauds two new books for showing how Silicon Valley’s success and image are based on obscuring certain people.
W. Patrick McCrayMar 25, 2021
- Science & Technology
Foggy Notions
W. Patrick McCray on “Rational Fog” by historian M. Susan Lindee. It addresses how “scientific knowledge and military applications meet, maraud, and maim.”
W. Patrick McCrayNov 9, 2020
Selling a Charismatic Technology
Historian of technology Patrick McCray reviews Morgan Ames’s new book on the MIT Media Lab’s One Laptop per Child program.
W. Patrick McCrayJan 23, 2020
Silicon Valley: A Region High on Historical Amnesia
In his review of O’Mara’s “The Code,” Patrick McCray describes how the federal government provided the tailwind that pushed Silicon Valley to stardom.
W. Patrick McCraySep 19, 2019
Science’s Freedom Fighters
Any process of designing science, with its complex suite of methods, funding structures, laboratories, and so forth, is inherently political.
W. Patrick McCrayNov 18, 2018
Silicon Valley’s Bonfire of the Vainglorious
W. Patrick McCray looks at two new books about Silicon Valley, Mark O'Connell's "To Be a Machine" and Alexandra Wolfe's "Valley of the Gods."
W. Patrick McCrayJul 17, 2017
- Science & Technology
Life as a Verb: Applying Buckminster Fuller to the 21st Century
Jonathon Keats’s new book “You Belong to the Universe” is rooted in two orthogonal pictures of Buckminster Fuller.
W. Patrick McCrayJun 21, 2016
- Science & Technology