Uncanny Valley
by
49/99
Critics' Rating Index
6/99
Readers' Rating Index
91/99
Scholars' Citation Index
99/99
Volume of Reviews
93/99
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About This Book
The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age In 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-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.
Reviews
"Wiener is a talented writer, and her story will engage fellow millennials who have found themselves obsessively refreshing social media or mindlessly scrolling to pass the time."
"This book is proof enough that we are not."
"The big-picture takeaways of Uncanny Valley are compelling, though they are not Wiener's alone ..."
"In fact no names are given, which becomes tiresome when applied to well-known companies ..."
"It is as though Wiener found herself under a spell that separated her from herself, a temporary state she still finds a little baffling ..."
"almost the opposite of a tell-all."
"the world the tech bros are molding is the one we're all living in."
"feels pertinent to the current political climate ..."
"References to 'meritocracy' among those at companies dominated by white American men would seem knowingly ironic were so many of the characters in Uncanny Valley not completely lacking in self-awareness ..."
"The almost detached nature of her writing as she recalls key moments in her life sometimes feels similar to Sally Rooney's hit Conversations With Friends."
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