Episode 2263: The Godmother of Silicon Valley on luck, love and fate

If Silicon Valley has an official matriarch, it might be the Palo Alto based educator and writer Esther Wojcicki. Popularly known as the “Godmother of Silicon Valley”, Wojcicki is the mother of former YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, 23andMe founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki and anthropologist and professor Janet Wojcicki. And, of course, she’s also the mother-in-law of Google co-founder Sergey Brin. So how does “Woj”, who, as the founder of the Media Arts program, taught for many years at Palo Alto High School, make sense of the last twenty years in which the zeitgeist has shifted from an evangelical faith in technological progress to a deep suspicion of it. And how does Wojcicki look back at her own family history in this period which has been marked by both astonishingly good fortune and terrible tragedy?

Esther Wojcicki is an educator and the author of the 2019 bestseller, "How to Raise Successful People."Wojcicki's daughters are YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki, 23andMe founder and CEO Anne Wojcicki and anthropologist and professor Janet Wojcicki. Wojcicki is founder of the Media Arts program at Palo Alto High School and vice chair of Creative Commons. Known as the "Godmother of Silicon Valley," she has been involved with GoogleEdu since its founding and helped establish the Google Teacher Academy. She is an expert in blended learning, the subject of her 2015 book "Moonshots in Education."

Named as one of the "100 most connected men" by GQ magazine, Andrew Keen is amongst the world's best known broadcasters and commentators. In addition to presenting KEEN ON, he is the host of the long-running How To Fix Democracy show. He is also the author of four prescient books about digital technology: CULT OF THE AMATEUR, DIGITAL VERTIGO, THE INTERNET IS NOT THE ANSWER and HOW TO FIX THE FUTURE. Andrew lives in San Francisco, is married to Cassandra Knight, Google's VP of Litigation & Discovery, and has two grown children.

Keen On is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit keenon.substack.com/subscribe