A tale of two universities. Or shall you encourage your teenager to learn Python.

One sunny early afternoon in the late summer of 2020, I met with two of my high school classmates for lunch. At some point, the conversation descended into the skills our children should absolutely learn. I stated that the most important thing is to have a basic grasp of data science, and that models cannot be created without learning Python. I argued that, after all, data science (today, after less than 3 years, we would use the term AI) will enter almost every area of life. At the time, I was learning Python in parallel with my early teenage daughter, who had it in her school curriculum.

One of my colleagues wasn't convinced-'You know guys, it rather seems to me that the most important thing is to teach children rhetoric and oratory skills. That they should be super orators, able to persuade. Then they will surely manage in life. And all this Python...It will, after all, be outsourced to Asia at the end.' The other colleague nodded at him.

I was a little surprised, because the proponent of learning rhetoric is an outstanding economist and a highly analytical person, operating on hard data and facts. He is also a person who has spent a certain part of his life in the UK and started his career in the City of London, which by his own admission has strongly shaped him. I mention this fact because I am now connecting the dots here from the point of view of the story I want to tell.

So, should I persuade a teenager to learn Python or to learn the art of speaking?

I just got through Malcolm Harris' 600+ page book "Palo Alto. A History of California, Capitalism and the World." I heard about this book somewhere at the beginning of the year and waited very hard for it sharpening my appetite. Because on Amazon it had excellent reviews on pre-order from many prestigious newspapers and magazines, well, and the topic seemed fascinating and missing from the market: the history of Silicon Valley from the beginnings of the city of Palo Alto to the present day.

And indeed it is an amazing work. It documents with Benedictine precision the history of California capitalism from the point of view of the development of the technology industry.?

But it doesn't just document. The author, a young writer who grew up in Palo Alto, makes a clear thesis and for 600 pages argues it laboriously. The story of the Valley, Palo Alto and California in general is a story of revolution. A revolution in opposition to brutal, pioneering capitalism.

First it's a revolution by Indian and Mexican farm workers against land-buying white Anglo-Saxon settlers. Later, the baton of revolution is taken up by Asians building railroads, in the interwar period by dockworkers also of minority origin, and finally there is the revolt of the 1960s which turns the tables. What is a turning point- more on it further on.

Does it sound Marxist? It does. Because this is a heavily Marxist book (which I didn't know when I bought it). Due to the fact that I spent the first 11 years of my life in a communist country, I'm not a fan of Marxism, but I prefer when a historian shows his views clearly, even Marxist ones, than when he cites dry facts. History doesn't flow then. And here it is flowing and going well.

In the meantime, during the 150 years of California's history and in spite of (as a result of ?) all the revolutions, there has been built a railroad from one coast of the US to the other, a vacuum tube, radar (or rather, its prototype invented in Palo Alto), and finally two inventions without which we would have neither computers, nor the internet, nor AI...nor anything. The transistor co-invented by William Shockley and the integrated circuit created by Gordon Moore and Bob Noyce.

But the main character of the story is not the revolution. Nor is it California. Nor even the eponymous Palo Alto.?

It is Stanford University. It was at Stanford that inventions that changed the course of history were made and new social currents forged. It was at Stanford that the final revolution of the 1960s took place, which had a key impact on the technological world as we know it.

Its founder Leland Stanford did not live to see a biographical blockbuster and his biography fully deserves it. A loser lawyer who ended up in California as a fortune seeker who cleverly accumulated land, then made his fortune with his brothers building railroads.?

Fleeing the angry proletariat of San Francisco, where a crowd in front of his home protested with increasing death threats, Stanford acquired a large country estate south of the city and renamed it Palo Alto. There he took up his passion - horse breeding - in retirement. He also invested in the creation of the first moving picture to analyze the movement of a horse at a gallop.

But more relevant to our story is the breeding itself. Stanford crossbred his horses in a ruthless way, without looking at their welfare, appearance or even conformation. What mattered was speed. Stanford calculated that by increasing the speed of the horses he would make a fortune considering that the market for transport horses in the United States was 13 million.

It can be said also that Stanford was one of the early fascinators of eugenics. The topic of eugenics and the subject of breeding geniuses like Leland's proverbial horses is a theme running through the book. One of the university's first professors, psychology department dean Lewis Terman, the creator of IQ tests (his son Fred is considered one of the fathers of Silicon Valley), was obsessed with creating a genius out of his son. Eugenics was of interest to William Shockley too.

Did the spirit of breeding and optimally training racehorses influence Palo Alto's 'genius loci'? Is that why this small town has become the entrepreneurial capital of the world? Did the University earn the nickname "the Farm" because of its original location?

Leland Stanford also created optimal conditions for his only child-son Leland Jr. to learn about the world. Unfortunately, in his teenage years, Leland Jr. fell suddenly ill while traveling in Europe and died of a common cold. Had it not been for the sad death of the young man, the University would not have been founded- a distraught Stanford and his wife donated their assets to the University.

From the beginning, the University built up its network of connections. One of its brightest graduates, future President Herbert Hoover, was a true master at this. And using his connections from his student years, making lavish donations to the University and building relationships with its professors and authorities, he turned everything into gold like King Midas. For himself. All the while giving the impression that he was doing it for the public good. This was the case, for example, with humanitarian aid to Belgium during World War I, on which Hoover made colossal money.

But the success of the University is largely due to Hoover.The Farm is also a collaboration between scientists and the military. Thanks to the Varian brothers, inventors of the klystron, the British were able to invent the radar that helped the Allies win the war in the air. But Stanford's laboratories also worked on napalm, which was used in Vietnam. One thing is certain-until the 1970s, California's technology boom was fueled by government military money, the Soviet arms race and subsequent wars-Korea and Vietnam.?

The ecosystem created in Palo Alto ("the Palo Alto System") is portrayed in the book as conservative and oppressive. The fact is that in the 1950s Stanford limited the number of Jewish students.

Malcolm Harris accepts the rather controversial thesis that California, due to its remoteness from the centers of power on the east coast, was, so to speak, an internal colony of the US. And that is why a multitude of adventurers flowed to it. The most important fact, according to the author, is that the colony, for most of its history, did not have enough manpower to develop it. For this reason, it had to import people from outside-Mexico, China, Japan, the Philippines. This caused the struggle for rights and power characteristic of colonial societies, where the ruling layer relied on defending its status using racism as well. In this context, I was deeply moved by the story from the book of an intelligence officer of Japanese descent who, after demobilization in 1945, goes door to door in Palo Alto in a U.S. Army uniform and no one wants to rent him a house.

There is also a second important aspect of the continually insufficient labor force. The colonial ruling layer exerted constant pressure to automate processes. Research, the implementation of technology into business, the constant increase in productivity. Wanting not to, the conservative establishment thus bred a different kind of race horse - liberal, highly educated youth.

Both of these factors resulted in, as always, action begets reaction. In the 1960s, California's exceptionally strong ethnic minorities and the aforementioned liberal youth took to the streets and began to lash out at the police. It seems symbolic that laboratories (spin-offs) located at Stanford working with the military were attacked and the youth began destroying computers considered tools of oppression.

The argument from the book that the rise and development of personal computers, fathered by the long-haired, apple-eating, guru visiting Steve Jobs, began with the rebellion of the late 1960s and early 1970s, appeals to me very strongly. People wanted computers that they themselves control and that serve them directly-not the governments, armies and coteries of the mighty of this world.

The circle is closing. Conservative colonialists created a conservative university focused on purely practical education, primarily engineering. But by breaking down the successive barriers of science, a layer of liberal intellectuals developed, which created the permanent change machine that is Silicon Valley.

"Palo Alto," as I mentioned, has been on my reading list since I heard about the book. "Chums.How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK" by Simon Kuper is a book of the kind I've wanted to read for a long time, but kept regretting the time and money for it. But while reading about Palo Alto, I decided that I wanted to compare how the US West Coast elites operate compared to the British ones. Or rather, how and what kind of elites Oxford shapes in opposition to Stanford.

Just as the main character of "Palo Alto" is a univeristy, the main character of "Chums" is a man. And he even has a name: Boris Johnson.

Simon Kuper is a longtime journalist for the Financial Times (so it's hard to suspect him of Marxism) and a graduate of Oxford, where he studied under Johnson, Cameron and other Brexiters. The book has been criticized by right-wing columnists in the UK that while it is "an excellent snapshot of the history of the era, full of anecdotes," its theses are completely unsubstantiated and it is not a very serious book at all. After reading it, I think the book is brilliantly written, as serious as possible, and shows the problem of political elites in the world today, not just in Britain.?

And it is by no means an attack on Oxford University, where, as the author repeatedly points out, both in the 1980s and now, many students, especially science majors, use their study time to the maximum. In contrast, he demonstrates an elitist educational model that does not aim to breed the "fastest horses," but to maintain the status quo. And while the anecdotes may indeed be more colorful in the British edition, the problem applies to all Western countries. It is only in London, when you often meet investment bankers with classics degrees provided they are Oxbridge grads. And brilliant orators.

Boris Johnson lends himself to the main character like few others. He is a graduate in classical philology, not because he loved ancient culture so much, but that after public school he knew Latin well enough that he barely had to study at university and here he was. He passed his time at Oxford mostly by drinking on the verge of addiction (member of notorious Bullingdon drinking club), like most upper-class students. Pouring over his studies and being able to improvise in front of professors was at a premium. A diploma with the lowest possible grades was a badge of honor.

There was, however, one thing in the 1980s among Oxford's upper-class students. The ability to speak. And to have charm, to seduce an audience. The skills were earned at the Oxford Union, a public debate club.

Boris, who eventually won the coveted position of Union president, excelled in debates. And there was and is a specific form of Oxford debates-you have to defend a position that you don't have to share at all. Often in the course of a debate, the parties have to switch camps. The joke counts (Boris is referred as "the jokester"). But often it is racist and sexist ridicule of the weaker one. But the audience, and then the voters, rejoice.

The debate in the Oxford edition perfectly prepares one for the profession of politics. But it is a typical technologist of politics. A cynical person who treats politics as a tool for his own career. And he will come up with any rip-off and huckster, including brexit, to interest himself and, more importantly, to impress.

Perhaps better already are the bloodthirsty "colonial" capitalists who will raise a rebellious generation of hippies. By the time these come of age as filthy rich cynics they will have raised another generation of those like themselves in their youth.

Well, what should we emphasize in educating our teenagers? Python or oratory ?

Or maybe on nothing? Maybe let them decide for themselves