The Glen Park Library

In October 2013, twenty-nine-year-old Ross William Ulbricht was arrested at the Glen Park Public Branch Library in San Francisco, accused of being the “Dread Pirate Roberts” and mastermind of a dark net drug marketplace known as Silk Road. Ulbricht was an ardent libertarian who believed Silk Road—described by the New York Times as “the largest, most sophisticated criminal enterprise the internet has ever seen”—was battling the forces of big government. He was convicted two years later of money laundering, computer hacking, and conspiracy to traffic narcotics and sentenced to life in prison.

Art historian Pamela Lee reads this event as a fairy tale of disruption rather than an isolated episode in the history of the dark net, Silicon Valley, and the relationship betwee