A chance job at an ebook start-up offers a sudden portal to San Francisco, on the other side of the country, a former outsiders’ haven now being blown apart by massive financial infusions. She lives an “affectedly analogue” life, taking photographs on film, and dating woodworkers, acoustic guitarists and an “experimental baker”.

“Tech promised what so few other industries or institutions could, at the time,” writes Wiener: “A future.”

It is also an affecting story of a young woman’s personal change and disenchantment: The Devil Wears Prada with LSD and sleeveless fleece jackets. Instead, it is a cool, witty, incisive dissection of an industry and culture which has asked “forgiveness, not permission” while imposing its beliefs across the whole world. It contains little business advice, and will not be of much use to the next generation of hustling would-be gurus. But unlike most of its peers, Uncanny Valley is not interested in name-dropping and corporate buccaneering. There are already a large number of Silicon Valley memoirs. Finally, she asks the question: “Do you think I work at a surveillance company?” He answers: “I thought you’d never ask.” She is taking a break from her gruelling work at a business-to-business start-up whose provision of data analysis to innumerable other apps and services gives its employees a backdoor view into some of the most personal information imaginable.Īs her friend rails against the tech industry’s slow centralisation, she grows uncomfortable.

This amusing memoir cast a wry literary eye over the cult-like world of Silicon Valley, says Laurence DoddsĪbout one year into her time in Silicon Valley, and halfway through her new book, Anna Wiener goes to hear a symphony with a privacy activist friend.

Uncanny valley book