We’re not at a loss for in-depth accounts of the tech industry these days. Reporters, cultural critics, academic historians, and tech figures themselves have been busy trying to explain a social and economic paradigm shift that’s affected everything from our dating lives to the security of municipal infrastructure. Books like Alexandra Wolfe’s 2017 Valley of the Gods have fetishized Silicon Valley, offering portraits of tech as a culture apart, rising up to replace the moribund institutions that have failed society—academia, public transit, local news media, government. Other books, such as Zucked: Waking Up to the Facebook Catastrophe, by Roger McNamee, a venture capitalist and an early mentor of Mark Zuckerberg’s, have taken a far darker view. Where these accounts converge is in portraying tech as nothing less than the catalyst of a radically new social order.
Uncanny Valley is a different sort of Silicon Valley narrative, a literary-minded outsider’s insider account of an insulated world that isn’t as insular or distinctive as it and we assume. Wiener is our guide to a realm whose denizens have been as in thrall to a dizzying sense of momentum as consumers have been. Not unlike the rest of us, she learned, they have been distracted and self-deluded in embracing an ethos of efficiency, hyperproductivity, and seamless connectivity at any cost. Arrogant software developers, giddy investors, and exorbitantly paid employees—all have been chasing dreams of growth, profits, and personal wealth, without pausing to second-guess the feeling of being “on the glimmering edge of a brand-new world,” as Wiener puts it in the middle of her book.
Now, from the vantage of 2020, the unintended consequences of the chase are glaringly obvious. But why was the recognition so slow in coming? Wiener downsizes that question to human scale: How, even half a decade ago—a lifetime in the Valley—could everyone still have been so blinkered, from those at the top down to her and others at the bottom? Complicity is Wiener’s theme, and her method: She’s an acute observer of tech’s shortcomings, but she’s especially good at conveying the mind of a subject whose chief desire is to not know too much. Through her story, we begin to perceive how much tech owes its power, and the problems that come with it, to contented ignorance. (...)
Wiener’s swerve into tech took place in post-recession America, where even graduates from prestigious universities found the old economy’s wreckage jamming the path to wealth and power. “My desires were generic,” she offers by way of explaining her jump from publishing to tech. “I wanted to find my place in the world, and be independent, useful, and good. I wanted to make money, because I wanted to feel affirmed, confident, and valued.” Tech held out the opportunity to “feel like I was going somewhere,” to stop questioning her worth. In publishing, she writes, “nobody my age was excited about what might come next. Tech, by comparison, promised what so few industries or institutions could, at the time: a future.” (...)
To watch Wiener watching herself become absorbed by her Valley existence, and then ever so gradually alienated, is to recognize along with her that the social life of the tech industry holds the key to understanding its hypnotic sway—and the corrosive effects of its cultlike culture. Paradoxically, the Valley’s vaunted commitment to transparency and social change gets in the way of perceiving its actual social effects. (...) In the Valley, money still counts, of course: Billions of dollars slosh across the Bay Area. But Wiener was “seduced by the confidence of young men” who had recalibrated the style, and the scale, of ambition. These geniuses see themselves in direct competition with the “middle-aged leaders of industry.” Their own professed faith in principles that promise meaning and purpose, along with an “optimized” lifestyle, marks a crucial and contagious difference. Wiener bought into the narrative, trusting innovators who she thought would be enlightened versions of Wall Street titans. “I wanted to believe that as generations turned over, those coming into economic and political power would build a different, better, more expansive world,” she writes, “and not just for people like themselves.”
Uncanny Valley is a different sort of Silicon Valley narrative, a literary-minded outsider’s insider account of an insulated world that isn’t as insular or distinctive as it and we assume. Wiener is our guide to a realm whose denizens have been as in thrall to a dizzying sense of momentum as consumers have been. Not unlike the rest of us, she learned, they have been distracted and self-deluded in embracing an ethos of efficiency, hyperproductivity, and seamless connectivity at any cost. Arrogant software developers, giddy investors, and exorbitantly paid employees—all have been chasing dreams of growth, profits, and personal wealth, without pausing to second-guess the feeling of being “on the glimmering edge of a brand-new world,” as Wiener puts it in the middle of her book.Now, from the vantage of 2020, the unintended consequences of the chase are glaringly obvious. But why was the recognition so slow in coming? Wiener downsizes that question to human scale: How, even half a decade ago—a lifetime in the Valley—could everyone still have been so blinkered, from those at the top down to her and others at the bottom? Complicity is Wiener’s theme, and her method: She’s an acute observer of tech’s shortcomings, but she’s especially good at conveying the mind of a subject whose chief desire is to not know too much. Through her story, we begin to perceive how much tech owes its power, and the problems that come with it, to contented ignorance. (...)
Wiener’s swerve into tech took place in post-recession America, where even graduates from prestigious universities found the old economy’s wreckage jamming the path to wealth and power. “My desires were generic,” she offers by way of explaining her jump from publishing to tech. “I wanted to find my place in the world, and be independent, useful, and good. I wanted to make money, because I wanted to feel affirmed, confident, and valued.” Tech held out the opportunity to “feel like I was going somewhere,” to stop questioning her worth. In publishing, she writes, “nobody my age was excited about what might come next. Tech, by comparison, promised what so few industries or institutions could, at the time: a future.” (...)
To watch Wiener watching herself become absorbed by her Valley existence, and then ever so gradually alienated, is to recognize along with her that the social life of the tech industry holds the key to understanding its hypnotic sway—and the corrosive effects of its cultlike culture. Paradoxically, the Valley’s vaunted commitment to transparency and social change gets in the way of perceiving its actual social effects. (...) In the Valley, money still counts, of course: Billions of dollars slosh across the Bay Area. But Wiener was “seduced by the confidence of young men” who had recalibrated the style, and the scale, of ambition. These geniuses see themselves in direct competition with the “middle-aged leaders of industry.” Their own professed faith in principles that promise meaning and purpose, along with an “optimized” lifestyle, marks a crucial and contagious difference. Wiener bought into the narrative, trusting innovators who she thought would be enlightened versions of Wall Street titans. “I wanted to believe that as generations turned over, those coming into economic and political power would build a different, better, more expansive world,” she writes, “and not just for people like themselves.”
by Ismail Muhammad, The Atlantic | Read more:
Image: Chau Luong
