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A review by erinhly
Uncanny Valley: A Memoir by Anna Wiener
4.0
This will likely be a very funny read for anyone who's ever lived in the San Francisco Bay Area and felt like a bit of an outsider. Wiener did a great job of analysing her research subjects with humour and compassion (whether or not this kind of psychological analysis is valid or important, or why she does it, she addresses later in the book).
While there's no groundbreaking analysis of Silicon Valley or its products in this book, it is an evocative depiction of what it looks and feels like from the inside (even if the 'outside' of the inside). The ennui, the boredom, the accelerationist utopianism. But, I would love to see her dig deeper into the assumptions and ideologies that underpin some of Silicon Valley's audacious social experiments (these parts of the book are where she shows potential but fails to build on it).
Wiener does a decent job of showing self-awareness of (and reigning back on) her east-coast literati snobbery (a kind of person not altogether uncommon in the Bay), and hinted at some structural/class analysis but failed to really build on that either.
While there's no groundbreaking analysis of Silicon Valley or its products in this book, it is an evocative depiction of what it looks and feels like from the inside (even if the 'outside' of the inside). The ennui, the boredom, the accelerationist utopianism. But, I would love to see her dig deeper into the assumptions and ideologies that underpin some of Silicon Valley's audacious social experiments (these parts of the book are where she shows potential but fails to build on it).
Wiener does a decent job of showing self-awareness of (and reigning back on) her east-coast literati snobbery (a kind of person not altogether uncommon in the Bay), and hinted at some structural/class analysis but failed to really build on that either.