Book Review
13th February 2021
Tim McQueen
Uncanny Valley – A memoir
Anna Wiener
Farrar Strauss & Giroux
284 pages
Wiener is a contributing writer to The New Yorker. After college she tried for a career in publishing in New York. As this wasn’t progressing she tried her luck in Silicon Valley with a tech startup (which was probably Audible). She worked for a couple of other startups and was peripherally involved in the Venture Capital scene. One encounter involved her dismissing the concept of self-driving cars to an engineer who was building them. As a memoir it is fairly narrow in scope. If you are interested in the experiences of a twenty-something year-old female on the fringes of Silicon Valley some five or ten years back this is the book for you. If not; don’t bother.
