Book Review: Uncanny Valley

Here’s my book review for Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener. Don’t forget to leave a comment if you’ve read it too. And check out today’s writing prompt at the bottom of this post.

Uncanny Valley by Anna Wiener is the memoir on startup culture, by a female writer who has actually been a part of said startup culture, that I have been waiting to read for over a decade. I just didn’t know I had been waiting to read it until I started reading it. 

From the very first page, I was deeply invested in hearing Wiener’s story, which was so much like my own. As I was reading this book, I felt seen and understood in a way that I never have before. And in a way, that is ironically hard to describe for a writer/editor like me who also worked in the tech industry and startup scene around the 2010s, post economic collapse, post college graduation— when startup founders were seen as gods who could do no wrong, and the publishing industry was experiencing a plethora of changes that no one could quite understand, especially the startup scene. Until I read this book, I never thought anyone had similar experiences to me back then. So, I found Wiener’s perspective incredibly validating and refreshing. Although I understand why others may not. 

Uncanny Valley offers nuanced insight into what it was like to work for a startup in Silicon Valley in the 2010s, and how it was so easy to become entrenched in a borderline cult-like world of CEOs with zero experience leading teams let alone growing companies, mandatory ‘fun’ and team ‘vacations,’ ‘actualization’ and ‘biohacking’ and usernames as real names, inane and diverse chat feeds, a skewed view of how reality looks outside tech bubbles, relaxed yet oddly intense office cultures and business networks, and weird cliquey language that surpassed and usurped programming languages and typical business jargon and everyday speech. Etc. 

This book also offers nuanced insight into what it was like to live in San Francisco during this time period, with its obvious misogyny, income gaps and disparities and pervasive homelessness. Wiener details her day-to-day concerns at a startup as she endures sexism and lives near homeless individuals. And the discordant images she paints are striking, as well as self-incriminating. 

Wiener never lets herself completely off the hook for the decisions she made while working at two different startups in the valley either. She unpacks her qualms and oftentimes rationalized ambivalence regarding their unfettered access to consumer and user data, as well as their social and moral responsibilities for the tech they were working so diligently to grow and grow and grow and grow, solely for profits. I also thought it was notable that she never once referred to a brand or company by name, although you still knew exactly to whom she was referring. 

Wiener’s memoir is vulnerable, smart, engaging, and sometimes excoriating, yet not without empathy or fairness. It’s as if while she was looking in the mirror of her own past while writing this memoir, she was also holding up a mirror for those inside Silicon Valley. As you follow her journey, it’s impossible not to empathize with the decisions she made and why. 

Overall, I would recommend this book to those Millennials who want a more nuanced take on how Silicon Valley actually operates, and what it’s like on the inside.

Here are some notable passages from the book:

“I had never seen such a shameful juxtaposition of blatant suffering and affluent idealism. It was a well-publicized disparity, but one I had underestimated.” (p.51)

“Some days, helping men solve problems they had created for themselves, I felt like a piece of software myself, a bot: instead of being an artificial intelligence, I was an intelligent artifice, an empathetic text snippet or a warm voice giving instructions, listening comfortingly.” (p.69)

“But I found myself newly cautious, leery of giving away too much intimate data. God Mode had made me paranoid.” (p.76)

“I understood my blind faith in ambitious, aggressive arrogant young men from America’s soft suburbs as a personal pathology, but it wasn’t personal at all. It had become a global affliction.” (p.154) 

“The novelty was burning off; the industry’s pervasive idealism was increasingly dubious. Tech, for the most part, wasn't progress. It was just business.” (p.260)

See more of my book reviews on Goodreads or subscribe to this newsletter below to receive more book reviews and posts about reading and writing in your inbox every day.

---

© All Rights Reserved by K.E. Creighton and Creighton’s Compositions LLC.

---

Today’s Writing Prompt