Wiener’s storytelling mode is keen and dry, her sentences spare-perfectly suited to let a steady thrum of dread emerge.' - Jennifer Szalai, The New York Times 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. Part coming-of-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. 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.Īnna arrived amidst a massive cultural shift, as the tech industry rapidly transformed into a locus of wealth and power rivaling Wall Street. 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. The prescient, page-turning account of a journey in Silicon Valley: a defining memoir of our digital age 'A definitive document of a world in transition: I won't be alone in returning to it for clarity and consolation for many years to come.' -Jia Tolentino, author of Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a January 2020 IndieNext Pick. Club, Vox, Jezebel, Town & Country, OneZero, Apartment Therapy, Good Housekeeping, PopMatters, Electric Literature, Self, The Week (UK) and BookPage. Named one of the Best Books of 2020 by The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, the Los Angeles Times, ELLE, Esquire, Parade, Teen Vogue, The Boston Globe, Forbes, The Times (UK), Fortune, Chicago Tribune, Glamour, The A.V. ONE OF THE NEW YORK TIMES'S 10 BEST BOOKS OF 2020.

The study of language fourth edition