Anna Wiener on her book “Uncanny Valley”
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
(As literary magazine names go, “n+1” is pretty relatable haha)
Also the self reflection of being in the industry is notable.
I recently read a number of historical treatments of the late gilded age and the roaring twenties, as well as some notable treatments of 20th century American history that partially covered that era, or provided additional insight into it (e.g. "The Glory and The Dream").
There are two strong impressions of that era that jump out from the historical literature. They are something like: "where are the adults?" and "business activity at full-speed, moving nowhere at all".
Here's the HN post from April 2016:
"The Metrics of Backpacks" by Victoria Gannon
https://www.artpractical.com/column/the-metrics-of-backpacks...
My own perspective is kinda weird, and I don't pretend to be an expert in the culture.
I started programming in 1983, with machine code, and I've been doing this stuff a very long time. As I look around at folks in the industry, I see that it is a very long time, indeed. There's not many people with the length of time in the industry I have (which is not necessarily something that has been beneficial to me).
I spent most of my career at a top-shelf Japanese corporation. It was a frustrating, but also awesome, experience that has almost no analogue at all with Silicon Valley culture. It was basically a "silo."
After leaving that company a couple of years ago, I have been acclimating to a vastly changed landscape. It's been rather eye-opening.
The one thing that has struck me the most, is that money seems to have become rather corrosive, while also energizing. It powers a lot of growth, innovation and energy, but also brings with it an almost complete moral vacuum. The Japanese corporation had many flaws, but I was impressed by their focus on teamwork and almost insanely high ethical standards (It was a very "old-fashioned" company). I regularly worked (and argued) with some of the most brilliant scientists and engineers in the world.
I like the energy, and I think some of the tools and techniques that have developed are really nice, but I have been rather taken aback by the manner in which our culture is expressed, these days. It's very different from the rather "scrappy" and hopeful way we thought about things back when.
I'm figuring out how to navigate the new world. I need to learn how to work in the fast-paced, cutthroat culture, while holding to my ethical compass, and my workflow.
Given that she worked at various startups in tech for four years, and the classic whiteboard/algo/coding/etc. required, that's quite a bar purely for a single book.
This is true generally. However, it's also the case that gender ratios can be quite different for different roles.
I worked for a Japanese company, and the engineering floors probably had about 40% women.
That's not necessarily for a positive reason, but I won't get into that. Suffice it to say that I worked with quite a few brilliant, disciplined and well-educated women.
At my company, everyone in Tokyo had at least a Masters' degree (it was a marquée company), and there were a lot of Ph.Ds around.
In her case, I think she was in customer support, but she talks about having a [rather unsuccessful] crash course in JavaScript.
2) Japan is notorious for low wages for software. So what you're really saying is that one demographic willingly accepts being underpaid. That doesn't sound brilliant to me.
That makes it sound rather nefarious. Rather than the experience motivating a book, it reduces it to a muckraker looking for drama. Non-fiction p-hacking. This is a big accusation dressed up as idle speculation, and it's motivated by nothing other than the fact that she's really good that this? I'm saddened to see this sitting up here as the top comment.
Personally, I like them, and I completely support this. It's far better than writing from an ivory tower.
In fact, I find it rather interesting that you assign nefarious intent to me.
We seem to have a "combat psyche" in our communications, these days, where we start off from a critical PoV, and degenerate from there; always looking for wrongs and weaknesses.
I see this a lot, possibly because I don't hide my age, and may be perceived as "ok boomer." It could also be that I simply come across in a rather "starchy" fashion. That's deliberate. If you knew me personally, you might (possibly) have a different view, as I might, of you.
No big deal. I'm getting my comeuppance. I used to be a rather..."pithy" troll, in the UseNet days. I tend to overcompensate for that, these days, and probably come across as "stuffy."
I just don't ever want to go back into that cesspit again. That's a big reason that I stick my personal brand on all my work and interactions on the Web.
I want to be held to account for what I say. If I say something that offends you, you know where to find me (look at my HN account page).
With that said, you actually have a good point. I did not mean it that way, but it's easy to see why it was interpreted that way. I screwed up how I wrote it.
However, just because someone misinterprets my intent, does not make their interpretation correct, even if I screwed up the way I wrote it, and encouraged that interpretation.
I'll see if I still have time to edit it, and maybe correct it.
EDIT: Nope. Too late.
Of course she sounds like a pro writer, she is a pro writer. That's like going to the bookstore, picking up a random novel and saying, "hey, this guy should write books!".
It's a bit off-putting to suggest that she started her big-tech career with the express goal of writing a book. It isn't common.
You have a point.
I did not mean that, but didn’t articulate myself in a productive manner.
Nobody who doesn’t already know Anna Weiner or Uncanny Valley would understand the meaning of the headline.
That doesn't mean I changed it to anything optimal—I'm at an event this morning and doing moderatory things on breaks, so everything is hastier than normal. If anyone can suggest a better title—that means more accurate and neutral, preferably using representative language from the article—we can happily change it again.
comma grammar at your discretion
"Anna Wiener on her book 'Uncanny Valley'"
Anna Wiener, a former GitHub employee, authors a book titled "Uncanny Valley" about "Unregulated surveillance, ruthless bosses, sexual harassment..." in Silicon Valley.
Also, from TFA: "in January 2018, Universal Pictures optioned film rights; the screenplay is now in its initial development stages and Wiener is executive producer."
You have the folks who only think of FANG as far as anything tech / coding practices goes.... or only think of their greenfield startup as how things are done.
Or that everything is some ultra deep back end computer science project ... and they bring those points of view to everything (that isn't necessarily bad or good).
Granted, all that variety is nice, but I suspect a lot of the grass roots coding world just isn't quite what we see on HN.
It is very likely that these grass root coders are or will be in the coming years using the very tools, methodologies, and even business practices devised in the Valley.
I think they also are a bit of a rabbit hole / and plenty of their tone never reaches the wider world while they chase new and shiny things.
This is a good example of how lines of thought like the author's that purport to be democratic socialist are actually committed to maintaining the institutions that entrench existing inequalities in cultural, social (and of course, financial) capital.
It's from someone with experience in the environment, so maybe it's just that the “boilerplate views” are common because they accurately reflect the situation, which would itself be a valuable (though uncomfortable to the same people that like to dismiss the perspective as “boilerplate views”) insight.
Essentially, she says: “It’s important to remember that Google is an ad platform and that Facebook is a surveillance platform.”
Google does indeed run an ad platform. But that's like calling any magazine or newspaper an ad platform. True, yet neither accurate nor interesting.
And don't get me wrong. I'm all for adblocking and razing Facebook to the ground. But I don't want to read empty mood affiliation pieces.
At least newspapers and magazines have subscribers that pay directly for the content. In fact, since Google and Facebook have eaten their advertising lunch, legacy publishers are more dependent on subscription revenue: https://medium.com/the-graph/advertising-vs-subscription-a42...
Although the best commentary probably comes late in the series, and very briefly so it's easy to miss, when a sociopathic (white, male) COO comes to Pied Piper offices and right off the bat comments that the gender balance is quite nice but could use a little colour.
Judging by only this article and the author's n+1 article, I get the expectation that the contents will be not-wrong but not-far-enough. The "boiler plate views" as you put it are popular because they contain blind spots - intentional or not - where a lot of damning criticism can be found. But their exclusion gives comfort to people with one foot in the valley bubble. People will more readily accept criticism of something that involves them if they get to sit on the periphery unscathed.
The risk to such coverage is that the reaction is surface level adaptation. Where problems don't get fixed, they just evolve to be less tangible.
I've been to plenty of other sites just as bad too. It instantly kills my desire find the article and read it.
I can utilize tools like these to make things easier for myself. But this view is what the average new reader experiences, it's surprising that they don't care more about that.
for reference, this[0] is what the above page looked like when I landed on it
It really is a return to the bad old days of the late 90's web where one wrong click would kill your browser with 20 new popups. Except this time these corporations are willingly doing it to themselves. I wouldn't have believed it even a few years ago. Surely this must be killing engagement on their sites?
I don't know what an internet without all of the worthless ad-supported "content" looks like, but however it looks, suspect it is the steady-state equilibrium that will exist in the future. Because the ad-supported business model -- bad UX by definition -- is so obviously a house of cards.
In this world, I can imagine a patronage model working: wealthy individuals support particular journalists, perhaps privately, and the infrastructure of the internet is used to get the word out in a way that is analogous to the chat or messaging of the present.
The advertising supported web has created perverse incentives, which doesn’t serve web users.
I don't see how paying for journalism solves anything on itself. You have to pay for specific kinds of journalism and create tools to allow discovery and differentiation of that journalism.
Of course, that may have meant that sites like YouTube and a lot of other content simply wouldn't exist.
To turn it around: what journalism have you paid for recently?
Maybe the presence of these banners says something important about the value of the content (in this context) and the respect that the organization has for its readers.
If you're willing to pay for journalism, find a newspaper – any newspaper – and buy a subscription. I assume from your posts that you're in America, and politically right-of-centre. What about the Wall Street Journal? It broke the Theranos story and many others, and employs a raft of very good journalists doing important work.
We had a local paper in my area, The Western Star, that ran for 206 years. It was the last source that I was really dedicated to, because I cared a lot more about local.
RIP Western Star https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p16007coll84
There was a day where, if we wanted to read an edition of a newspaper or a magazine, we would pay a dime or a quarter to receive a copy. We could do essentially the same thing on the internet, but for some reason everyone huffs and puffs and insists that it wouldn't work. Yet it hasn't truly been tried. I would certainly "insert" a quarter to receive a day-pass in order to read something I'm interested in. Just give me the option. For the people who don't want to pay, they can choose to view ads and annoying modals.
I've run into honestly much more bizarre stuff without ever venturing outside portrait...
But I assume I'm missing something really obvious.
What is it about GitHub in particular that attracts these activists?