a little book review: uncanny valley
Hi everyone! My finals finished this morning and I have a longer, more in-depth review to publish for next week. Hopefully the next few weeks will be filled with more reading and writing :)
Today I just have a little lightning review on Uncanny Valley, by Anna Wiener.
After a few years languishing as an editorial assistant at a literary agency, Wiener joins an eBook startup. She soon finds herself enthralled by the fast-paced, freeing world of nascent tech companies. She moves to San Francisco to join another start-up, then another, riding the highs of job security, flexibility, and a culture based in innovation, optimization, and superiority. But soon enough, she starts to see that the utopian promises of tech hide the darker truths of the industry.
I blitzed through this is a few days. A thoughtful, self-aware, tongue-in-cheek picture of Silicon Valley from someone both enchanted and removed from it. I felt like I was reading a celebrity exposé penned by a former best friend. Wiener has this dry, deadpan tone when talking about all the ridiculousness she encounters in tech and NoCal culture, and it reminded me of Ling Ma's Severance or Mary South's You Will Never Be Forgotten (which may, admittedly, not be to everyone's taste). Wiener has a great ear for rhythm and sentences in general. Also, she thoughtfully balances her own experiences of workplace misogyny with her class and race privilege, and her participation in gentrification.
This book is for those who are already in-tune with the controversies of Big Data and tech — those new to these ideas might want some context, first. Additionally, I wish there was more of a moment of transformation. Since the book is written in retrospect, Wiener as a narrator is already disillusioned with her work — she looks back self-deprecatingly at herself, wearing her company's merch or seeking her boss's approval. I wonder if this book would have been more illuminating if we saw Wiener's fascination with tech as it was; genuine and optimistic — and then her disillusionment.
Nevertheless, Uncanny Valley was an addicting read that's shaping the way I look at technology and culture. Wiener has further affirmed for me that whatever the world needs to be a better place, a bunch of brilliant yet entitled white boys, with zero accountability, is not it.