Uncanny Valley

Having just made the switch from the publishing industry to the tech industry last year, this one hit home (granted, I am in a very different kind of tech – but still). Weiner takes the jargon and conventions of the tech industry (which I'm afraid I have adopted in my day-to-day), and holds it up to the light to show how empty that language is – and how empty emotionally, and maybe ethically, startup culture can be. Reading more like a really long essay in the New Yorker, this has less of the usual intimacies of a memoir, which makes that subtitle feel like a misnomer. Truly, this is a journalistic expose of the machismo driving the explosive development of Silicon Valley, and how that un-tempered, white-male energy has created what one should conclude are some pretty hefty ethical and societal problems. It is poginant, well-written, and troubling. I'd certainly recommend it, especially for anyone in tech.