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.

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. Equal parts bildungsroman and insider report, this book reveals not just excesses of the tech-startup landscape, but also the Faustian bargains and hidden. 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. 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. Īnna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. 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. ISBN-13: 9780374278014 Summary In her mid-twenties, at the height of tech industry idealism, Anna Wienerstuck, broke, and looking for meaning in her work, like any good millennialleft a job in book publishing for the promise of the new digital economy. 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. Uncanny Valley: A Memoir Anna Wiener, 2020 Farrar, Straus and Giroux 288 pp.

The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age

Book uncanny valley