Uncanny Valley - a Memoir

Author(s): Anna Wiener

BIOGRAPHY

A January 2020 IndieNext Pick. One of Vogue's 22 Books to Read This Winter. "A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to Uncanny Valley for clarity and consolation for many years to come." --Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion 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.

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Product Information

General Fields

  • : 9780008317881
  • : HarperCollins Publishers Australia
  • : Fourth Estate
  • : 0.355
  • : July 2019
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : Anna Wiener
  • : Paperback
  • : proof
  • : 304