Alex Sayf Cummings, "Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy" (Columbia UP, 2020)

New Books in American Studies · Aug 5, 2020 · 38m

Beginning in the 1950s, a group of academics, businesspeople, and politicians set out on an ambitious project to remake North Carolina’s low-wage economy. They pitched the universities of Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill as the kernel of a tech hub, Research Triangle Park, which would lure a new class of highly educated workers. In the process, they created a blueprint for what would become known as the knowledge economy: a future built on intellectual labor and the production of intellectual property. In Brain Magnet: Research Triangle Park and the Idea of the Idea Economy (Columbia UP…