Uncanny Valley

Books | Biography & Autobiography / Science & Technology

3.5

(231)

Anna Wiener

A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER. ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2020. Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Esquire, Parade, Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, Forbes, The Times (UK), Fortune, Chicago Tribune, Glamour, The A.V. Club, Vox, Jezebel, Town & Country, OneZero, Apartment Therapy, Good Housekeeping, PopMatters, Electric Literature, Self, The Week (UK) and BookPage. A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a January 2020 IndieNext Pick."A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to it for clarity and consolation for many years to come." --Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-DelusionThe prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital ageIn her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wiener—stuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennial--left a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. She moved from New York to San Francisco, where she landed at a big-data startup in the heart of the Silicon Valley bubble: a world of surreal extravagance, dubious success, and fresh-faced entrepreneurs hell-bent on domination, glory, and, of course, progress.Anna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. But amid the company ski vacations and in-office speakeasies, boyish camaraderie and ride-or-die corporate fealty, a new Silicon Valley began to emerge: one in far over its head, one that enriched itself at the expense of the idyllic future it claimed to be building. Part coming-of-age-story, part portrait of an already-bygone era, Anna Wiener’s memoir is a rare first-person glimpse into high-flying, reckless startup culture at a time of unchecked ambition, unregulated surveillance, wild fortune, and accelerating political power. With wit, candor, and heart, Anna deftly charts the tech industry’s shift from self-appointed world savior to democracy-endangering liability, alongside a personal narrative of aspiration, ambivalence, and disillusionment.Unsparing and incisive, Uncanny Valley is a cautionary tale, and a revelatory interrogation of a world reckoning with consequences its unwitting designers are only beginning to understand.

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More Details:

Author

Anna Wiener

Pages

288

Publisher

Farrar, Straus and Giroux

Published Date

2020-01-14

ISBN

0374719764 9780374719760

Ratings

Google: 4

Community ReviewsSee all

"December read…informative"

Erika Lynne

"(More of 2.5 stars) It is a memoir about a person who works in the publishing industry of New York venturing into the tech scene. She tries her hand at a flailing tech startup in New York. She then moves to San Francisco, works for Mixpanel and Github. She seems to strike a chord and befriend Patrick Collison of Stripe. She opines a lot about the scene of SFO, Tyler Cowen, Julia Galef, and various people and shares her view. The author seems to be a down-to-earth person and the book is written well. But she seems like a bickering person. Someone who is an outsider with some strong views and couldn’t come to digest the changes in Silicon Valley. I could not resonate with a lot of problems she was facing. I had the same problem with a graphic novel based memoir, Good Talk. I could understand their point of view but I don’t resonate or agree with the writer’s judgment. I totally didn’t understand the point of why this book was celebrated so much. Is it because she is against the grain and criticizing Silicon Valley? Or is she an insider in the New York publishing coterie who knows how to market and distribute a book well? I persisted through the book to find out views that are something new but in vain. She complains a lot about the garbage language that the tech startups in San Francisco use. She might have taken a snapshot of that and captured it in her book. But I think she misses the point of emergence. Language evolves, morphs, and grows. Personally, I might not like using the term “Let’s double click on that” or “Let’s pin that down for a moment” but what is wrong with it if people understand it. When I was new to the startup scene, I was curious about the term “copy text” or “copywriter”. I was baffled at that term and used to ask what the **** it was. But slowly learned what it is and I see that it’s a remnant of the publishing and advertising industry. I might have hated that term for a day or so. In my son’s generation, the terms like “outro” are commonly used and people get it. We all are aware of introduction music or intro title. But people simply get that “outro” is related to the end of the video and move forward. They don’t ruminate about this term and classify it is a garbage language. Many people still are finicky about using the term “pre-pone” and emphasize using the term “advance” or “reschedule”. But the joke is on us, as people who “prepone”, the “outro” music is moving forward and do give a damn about me and likes."