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=                      Uncanny_Valley_(memoir)                       =
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                            Introduction
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'Uncanny Valley' is a 2020 memoir by writer Anna Wiener. The book
focuses on Wiener's transition from the publishing industry to a
series of jobs at technology companies, and her gradual
disillusionment with the technology industry.


                              Summary
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The book details Wiener's decision to quit her job as a freelance copy
editor and literary agency assistant in New York in order to move to
Silicon Valley in San Francisco. Wiener, who felt restricted by the
publishing industry's restrictive norms and shrinking revenue, feels
out of place amongst the tech executives and engineers in her new
surroundings yet content with her rising wage and generous work
benefits. After switching between several companies, she finally
settles on the open-source coding company GitHub as a customer service
representative. Despite the demeaning nature of her work and the
stressful nature of investigating potentially inflammatory or illegal
posts on the site, she decides to remain due to the company's various
perks, such as being able to work from home. Throughout the book,
Wiener ruminates about the moral implications of data collection and
manipulation amongst technology firms.


                     Background and composition
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Wiener moved to San Francisco from New York City at the age of 25 to
pursue a job in the tech industry. Upon arriving, she had few friends,
and corresponded over email with friends still in New York. Wiener
also emailed herself notes about amusing conversations or interactions
she overheard or witnessed and saved them in a folder she dubbed
"Notes to Self". These emails and text messages later proved useful
when writing 'Uncanny Valley'.

The earliest version of what would later become 'Uncanny Valley'
appeared in literary magazine 'n+1' in 2016. Wiener did not include
the names of the companies at which she worked, in the original piece
or the book, opting instead to describe the companies' business models
and reputations. She employed the same descriptive strategy when
referencing other technology companies, and other organizations with
connections to Silicon Valley and tech generally, such as Stanford
University. Examples include referring to Facebook as "the social
network everyone hated" rather than referring directly to the
corporation.


                             Reception
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'The New York Times'′ Lauren Oyler described Wiener as "far from
seeking to disabuse civic-minded techno-skeptics of our views [...]
she is here to fill out our worst-case scenarios with shrewd insight
and literary detail."

'Wired'′s Jason Kehe called Wiener "a master of the descriptive arts",
a writer of "immaculate sentences", and said the book was "a dishy,
readable account" of working in Silicon Valley. The review also
critiqued Wiener for "never [resolving] the self-contradictions of her
industry, city, or existence" and the book for having "foundational
wobble."


License
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Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncanny_Valley_(memoir)