Over the past few decades, Austin, Texas, has made a concerted effort to develop into a "technopolis," becoming home to companies such as Dell and numerous start-ups in the 1990s. It has been a model for other cities across the nation that wish to become high-tech centers while still retaining the livability to attract residents. Nevertheless, this expansion and boom left poorer residents behind, many of them African American or Latino, despite local and federal efforts to increase lower-income and minority access to technology.

This book was born of a ten-year longitudinal study of...