chairs and lean them against something straight, that would be great. >> tonight on book tv, starting at 8:00 eastern, highlights from our in depth program. we begin with the author of a number of books, among them "a history of the black national anthem" and "breathe", and followed by a novelist, "a spark of light", journalist and science fiction novelist, cory discusses his books. and in the time of social distancing, get a good book. >> next anna wiener, author of "uncanny valley", on her experience in working on tech startups in san francisco. >> we're honored to come full circle tonight not only a local author and regular customer at book stores, anna wiener covered silicon valley in wired

and many publications. and mike's coverage won an award for distinguished business reporting. he writes frequently about uber, facebook and other so-called giants for the times and appears often on cnbc bchl krch , and msnbc. the book signing will be in the back and appreciate if you keep the line along the wall to your far right. enjoy reading, everybody. [applause] >> i thought there would be 20 people here. >> yeah, it's all friends, friends and-- >> and a fireside chat. >> a congressional hearing, be on your c-span behavior, all of

us, especially mike. >> yeah, i'm not going to curse tonight, i think. i'm going to try not to. i was thinking and i think you were thinking you should probably start off with reading something. i don't know how many people here have actually read any part of the book, but i think it would be nice to, you know, have you read a part. >> thank you, yeah. thank you guys for coming, also, and especially those of you who are standing. i've stood at many an event at this bookstore. by frequent customer, a person who needs to go on a run to here. and then stop. but, yeah, thank you guys for coming, this is really nice and overwhelming. so i figure i would read something toward the end of the book, a section dear to my heart about venture capitalists on twitter. it's reasonably relevant. are there any venture

capitalists here? [laughter] >> they wouldn't dare, i don't think. >> no, no. >> oh, oh, i see a hand. [laughter] >> great. thank you for your service. [laughte [laughter] >> do you think you hate yourself, asked the therapist in berkeley. coming on strong for an intake session i thought, but the next day i found myself following a bunch of venture capitalists on the micro platform: they were discussing income and i couldn't look away. they were looking at the urban poor. as the iceberg melted and ticked to inhabitability, they were discussing ai, whether or not china would own it would bring about the third world

war. they want today see artificial intelligence jump start the renaissan renaissance, so they could do that and the rest of us could focus on art. should ai inspire revolution, owning bunkers in new zealand stocked with guns and peanut butter. and i'd believe in ai when they were in -- out of a job. most days they talked ideas. how is cement enlightenment, theories to complex social problems. the future of media, the decline of higher ed. cultural stagnation and the builders mindset. they talked about how to find a good-- for generating more ideas presumably to have more things to talk about. despite the feverish of open markets, continuous renovation

the venture class could not be relied on for nuances of capitalism. they sniped about the structural hypocrisy of capitalism from a smartphone as if defending capital from a smartphone were not grotesque. they saw the world through a kaleidoscope of startups. if you want to eliminate inequality was to start up your own company wrote the accelerator. every capitalist person-- replied an angel investor. the area like antiquities, learn from the scholars and meet other people in your generation and return home with the knowledge and networks you need. did they know that people could see them? [laughter] >> the venture capitalists were not above inspiration culture. it's so nice that you're mic'd because your laughter is-- beautiful for me.

sorry. the venture capitalists were not above inspiration culture. they shared reading lists and product recommendations and advised their followers to stay humble. eat healthy they said, drink less, travel, meditate, find your why. work on your marriage, and talked up the primacy of grit. whenever they denigrated the work-life balance as soft or antithetical to the termination for start-up success, i wondered whether how many of them had an executive assistant, a personal assista assistant. i couldn't imagine making millions of dollars every year and choosing to stir on social media. almost an internet addiction. gloves off, just e-mail each other. they do. they talk on whatsapp. then again, if the internet was good for anything, wasn't it this? transparency and action, access to the mind of the industry elite. there's no better way to know which venture capitalist wrung

their hands over the impact of identity politics on productivity or how applying practices to life in woodside were going. and entrepreneurs who couldn't scale or mistook criticism as harassment and perceived themselves as victims of digital, and how many of identified ideas, and investment strategies of the people transforming society the people i was helping make rich. and cut it there. [applaus [applause] >> thank you for my copy. so i'm going to-- [inaudible] what the folks were talking about. >> mixed bag, an ambivalent book. >> so i don't know how many folks in the audience have read

it, but a few, probably not too many, i'm thinking about probably the beginning of your narrative and, you know, your approach in coming into tech after your career in publishing. from publishing to tech and i'm wondering what happened. what was-- from the beginning were you sort of ready to skewer how things were here or did you come in with a sort of, maybe things are as optimistic as they seem as sort of genuine as they seem? how did you come into this? >> wide-eyed is definitely a good description. the year is 2012. i'm working in publishing and i realize that people make money in their jobs and this is a revelation to me. yeah, i think for a long time

for a while i-- for a long time i wanted to really believe it there was sort of an intricate balance of self-delusion or something that lasted for a long time, like a game of solitaire that lasted for long time or something like that. i think that the interesting-- funny to me the way people speak and the way sort of hike corporate fielty has to be funny otherwise it's terribly depressing, but i didn't think about writing about it or like skewering it in any critical way or criticizing it gently even. i think i'm pretty fair in the book. it's not wildly negative book. i think i read the meanness part. my dad was like, the venture capitalists really don't get a break in your book. >> got it going really hardments they can take it, if anyone can take it it's the vc.

they're just middlemen. >> sorry to the one guy in the back. [laughter] >> yeah. we're both open-minded individuals who could be, could listen to a different narrative. just a structural position. >> is this like a, you know, a lot of the criticism that i hear a lot of times, oh, new yorkers are coming in and just sort of bringing their sort of critical approach to this. and i guess i'm wondering if this is-- if your criticism is unique to how things work around here or could you apply this to other industries, right. like you were in publishing beforehand. is that just as right for some sort of spinal tapesque commentary? >> right, yes, absolutely. [laughter]. i mean, i think that business is inherently interesting. i think that the -- that that

workplaces are-- provide the stuff of literature. i wouldn't have necessarily identified that as someone inside of a workplace. i don't know that i would have necessarily written a book about book publishing. many have done so before, many a traitorous editorial assistant, but i-- >> and in the book as editorial assistant and goes through the trappings of what that's like and i don't know how-- >> there's just no future in that. book publishing, the industries have and publishing are different obviously, but each has a sort of set of internal rules and norms and things that you take for granted and the social relationships you need to have to maintain certain professional ambitions and this might be just what it is to be a person who works in business where the network is small.

>> sounds like twitter. [laughter]. >> yeah, except, but maybe. except your career advancement sort of depends who you're having dinner with on a thursday. does that make sense? yeah. but on twitter everyone is having dinner alone on twitter. just separate, it's decentralized. but i think that, yeah, i think that you could probably skewer on the industry, i just remember there are people in the room who are from the book world and suddenly i feel chasened. >> no, you've just got to go for it, man. >> the reason i wrote about tech and not book publishing, because i felt there hadn't been a time of first person narratives about this particular era. there had been first person narratives about previous arias that were from the similar vannage at that point of sort of entry level employees, nontechnical employee woman,

what's it like to be a woman in tech, just kidding. and sorry, people keep asking me things like did $. >> is that a question you get a lot. >> so i assume you're a woman. >> to be a woman. >> you work in tech. how is that going? i think-- but i had-- it wasn't tribalist or like medium post about how to fire your staff, but like still have them feel good about the family, you know what i mean? there's a lot of literature about tech that didn't reflect my own experience so i think there's a lot of literature about book publishing that reflects the common experience and hasn't exchanged for 60 years so it's consistent material, anyway. >> and the next book in publishing. >> my next book focus on the two years in book publishing and no one will buy it.

>> so you go from book publishing into silicon valley, there's this-- well, initially your first start-up you're going based in new york. >> yes, that's right. >> but it's still a jump from publishing into tech, right? and i guess i wonder if there was, you know, now i guess you are branded for better or worse as like a skeptic of the arena, but i guess i'm wondering if there was a moment where you bought into what they were selling. now, bought into like this is the-- i think a lot of folks in the valley just sort of believe, you can-- if you have a certain skillset, you can kind of go to whatever company, you know, but a lot of it is what you're trying to do and what you're trying to accomplish. was for you-- >> like the feeling of being in a mission-driven organization where the mission wasn't-- >> well, tell us about the

first before the good stuff. >> the first company i went to work for was like a netflix for e-books product although everybody was careful not to use the words, but it was e-reading app initially for, i think, just iphone, that was like a library for a monthly fee and i had reached out because i read on the par ris review blog that this company it raised $3 million and it's like their seed, it wasn't a series a. >> i like that-- reading the paris review. >> that's where i got my businesses, a lot. and to are me $3 million was like, oh-- sorry, c-span. >> they'll bleep it out. >> this is like the future what the industry will be, like e-books and i want to do that

because i couldn't see a future for myself in books. >> 3 million is a lot-- >> it's not for the venture capitalists and the banks, sorry, killing them. sorry we don't know anything. i figured i'd be like the book expert so i wrote a lot of e-mails to them where i was, i love books, i know it's annoying to you that i have to keep can go what a back end is. i'm a reader and you need someone like me on staff and they didn't, but they were very kind about it and were like, listen, there's this company in san francisco you should know about and doing-- i'd been using this software, analytic software to see how people were using the app and just doing like very minimal, not even analysis, just like data collection and they were

like, the people who make the software at the start-up they have fewer than 20 people. they're the next unicorn, rocket ship, blah, blah, blah. >> well, rocket ship, i want to be on a rocket ship. everyone in book publishing is like i think this could potentially make the list in three years. yeah, rocket ship sounded good so i went and interviewed at this company that makes a data analytics product. and that's that. sorry, this feels like a job interview. [laughter] >> what do you want? >> okay, so, you know, i guess i'm wondering was there a moment where like you were inspired. >> oh, yeah. >> and we'll get into it, you know, for whatever. and, but i-- you know, i think the thing that a lot of folks in let's say new york or in journal or

whatever is like a side on the mission right. and there for you at least in the beginning. >> yeah, yeah. my -- i bought-- so i was not a journalist at any point until like last year, and so that skepticism and that cynicism. i wasn't reading a lot about the tech industry, didn't know you had cynical snark from wag and businesses like you won't believe what this young billionaire wears on sundays. and it's like the same thing he wears every day, 17 of the same outfit, but i think that there-- we've not talked a lot about book publishing, but feeling there was momentum, everything at a dead end to suddenly be at a 20 person company and to matter, to feel useful not only was i useful, but i was

contributeening a way that actually kept the momentum going and customers support. like the genius was here to rebuild our infrastructure. it was less about the mission of the company than the feeling of working on something with a small group of people who i really liked and it was working and that seemed so improbable that you'd have this organization of 20 people run by a couple of 24, 25 year olds, it just kept getting better and better. and this is my pitch for everyone to go work for a small start-up. but i think i was really down for that momentum, if not like this is going to make the world a better place. i think i was like analytics is fascinating and i personally find this product really interesting and can sort of justify it as like an extension of my socialology bachelors degree from six years ago. but you know, i -- i don't think i was ever like data

collection, storage, analysis, unbeknownst to the user, like god knows where it goes. that's making the world betterment i was like this is fundamentally interesting and a business education, and i think this is an industry, obviously, that emphasizes the individual, right? and so i felt individual will i quite useful and great in a way that was died to the collective effort, but also, was distracting enough, i wasn't like perhaps data collection is part of a broader economy, you know. we weren't having these conversations. >> that was-- yeah, you don't sort of get into the larger, whatever implications, what are you doing. >> no, because it's working for your customers and they're like, this is awesome, you're helping us optimize whatever flow to like achieve whatever goal which is usually just like some monetization event and everyone is stoked and everyone is making money and you make money when they make money and

doesn't matter the intricacies. i was helping people use it, and you're helping us make money and that's the subtext and feels great, feels great oh, are you having a problem with the software, let me tell you how to fix it, have you ever had knowledge about something? it's amazing. [laughte [laughter]. i can fix your problem. i've never ever fixed anyone's problem in any way. so, anyway, theres' a lot of intoxicating cultural stuff. >> so did you-- there's a lot in there, but the hierarchy of customer support versus you know, pins and whatever is interesting to me and i'm wondering how that-- like initially, you can feel good about your position in

that company, but was that ever sort of like really underscored for you over time? i've always heard the stories, well, they're like having a culture so we want to go there or they don't value x enough. i guess i'm wondering if that was made clear to you over time. >> when-- sorry, when someone is like they have a heavy end-- who wants to go there. >> the hierarchy where you stood. yeah, well, i feel like soft skills, hard skills dichotomy. it's very interesting and often soft skills, i think, or, you know, being told you're not technical enough or being asked to potentially show more credentials than someone else in your role. i think often like this dichotomy is kind of used as a cover for, like the perpetuation of certain inequities or bias or anyway, i

think that it's a gender, offensive racialized dichotomy, anyway-- not anyway. >> interesting. >> i think the idea that engineering skills is more valuable has to do clearly with the market. but having been in like the position of trying to hire people for soft-- you know, what's considered soft skilled jobs or considered not technical jobs is hard and potentially harder for someone who can write fluently for data was more me harder than engineers finding a mid level engineer. and on both sides of that equation. but i think that, you know, engineering skills are the primary focus. a lot of the company perks are oriented toward hiring and retaining those employees.

obviously you can't have a product without it, i get it, but without those people, but it does lead to this sort of internal hierarchy that can leave a lot of people feeling like second class citizens and so i mentioned race and class-- well, i mentioned race and gender because i think that it's sort of that's baked into that hierarchy as well, so it can influence the way things are running internally and-- >> that's what i'm kind of getting at. kind of like one, appreciate you laying that out and i think that's now coming to bear a little bit more at least right now, but the questions around what should be the most, you know, prized position in the company. who is actually hire and sort of-- i feel like fundamental assumption are now being actually questioned in the wake of whatever, just actually questioning them.

>> yeah, well, i think what is concerning to me is that is this conflation of your-- that i think is, it's not specific unique to the valley, it's like american capitalism, but feels amplified in the valley, this idea that your personal worth is directly correlated to your economic output or your economic contribution and your economic value, whatever your value in the marketplace and that there's something morally superior, in fact, about being an engineer, having a certain-- what is assumed to be a certain mindset or a certain value system and that has a sort of weird-- it resonates in different ways. i guess it's this sort of like-- it leads to a certain hierarchy in certain companies, but it also leads to a mindset that is very oriented toward optimizing toward the bottom line or something, that has--

it's just not like a humane approach to life or to the leadership or to organization. so, anyway, chatting away with the microphone. [laughter] >> i think the leadership thing is -- so, okay. so we get past your start-up. we go to your next start-up, and all sort of-- reference, but not exactly-- you get to the second ceo who is challenging or interesting, sort of like, i don't know exactly what i would describe him as, but he seems kind of archtypical one would have for a leader here and i'm wondering at least at the time, like an avatar for, you know, problems in leadership in tech or did you sort of see him as, whatever, a flawed human being?

how did you sort of perceive this guy? >> well, it's in the book, mike. [laughter] >> yeah, so, the ceo of the company, the second company i worked for, the first in san francisco. i was 24 when i joined the company, i was 25. obviously worldly experience miles beyond. and he had been through-- the company had been through the common -- i think it's incredibly hard thing to do to run a company of adults with dependents, and i don't envy anyone in that position, obviously you self-select if you're lucky. and i have sympathy for someone growing up at the same time they're learning to be a ceo. i think that the reason i don't name companies and don't name executives, there are a few of them, but one i feel that the

behavior that i saw institutionally as well as individually was more a result of a sort of structural position than any individual failure and i realize that that's also sort of like an exculpatory narrative or exculpatory framework. >> if you haven't read the book, she hasn't named any of the companies or any of the people, but there are some obvious illusions. >> it's very google-- it's not to be coy or to be, like offer a puzzle for people to solve, although, i'm sure that that-- it's kind of, maybe it's-- and i'm not against -- more than i want to suggest, what i think is a sort of common leadership style, it has more to do with the incentives of the business models than of the industry and to maybe

illustrate this, i told at another reading-- [inaudible] >> i feel like i'm walking around to the readings with my -- with my own book and like i'm an american girl doll. here i am with my book and telling my anecdotes, so i read some -- i forget what it was, i think it was in new york someone came up to me after a reading and read my book and mentioned how early members of my team were in a conference room and manager asked who are the five smartest people you know, write their names down and we all did this exercise. and then he's like look at your list, why don't they work here? and-- ments one of them was abraham lincoln. >> and i was like why would they work here? they have to make sense. there are so many other useful things to do in the world, interesting things to do in world. why would my friends in

graduate school-- they probably would make their way to tech. why would people who are smart and talented and interested in other things, why would they work at this analytics company. i'm here because i don't know what my purpose is in life and i'm trying to figure that out while making money and having health insurance. it's the five smart people you know should work here because it has economic value. that is what i mean about this conflation. anyway, this story-- >> and this is what i think a lot. do you think that hubris is endemic to how these things work or that's required to-- >> this is the anecdote that i'm telling, mike. >> oh, sorry. >> yes, yes, i totally do, the story, i'm behaving like i should have a one line answer for everything. so someone came up to me after the event and she was like, i -- same thing happened in my company. and actually it wasn't the first time i heard this, another woman who worked at a

start-up in san francisco had texted me to say, this was like deja vu for me. i can't believe this happened to you, they must have all read it on a blog post because i, too, was pulled into a room and asked to write down the names of the five smartest people that i know, totally unrelated company and and i would call anti-intellectual, more about that in the book, too, that has to do more with like people read business advice, they've never run a company before, they suddenly have a ton of money, a ton of responsibility to their investors and responsibility to their employees and trying to figure out how to lead and read a blog post, here is how you can scale hiring and get really good people for your core team, you know, that will set the tone for the rest of your company, corral your employees in a conference room and ask them who the smartest people they know are and then like, push

them to recruit them and say, oh, we'll pay you 5 to $8,000 per recruit. i tried so hard to recruit people who were and were not the smartest people i knew. but anyway, i think this is-- . [laughter] >> i think the industry has values. you could speak to this as well, that you maybe have seen this in your excellent book investigation of uber. >> and it's called super punk by mike isaac. it's available at this bookstore. he'll be signing afterwards. i think the company cultures are shaped by the business model and shaped and incentives shaped by the venture capital and you have prioritization of speed and scale and whatever coupled with the sort of libertarian spirit of industry that has been incubating, if you will for 25 years, 30, 40

years, i don't know. and 20, longer, 50 years. and you kind of get this like weird cultural product that doesn't values expertise, values over consideration and research, has a sort of iterative-- i don't know where i'm going, i'm sorry, this is on c-span. >> so, all right, so it's fair to say there's a lot of skewing in the book. i'm wondering if there's parts of your experience in some of these companies that you take with you, like actual appreciate it? a lot of the time, journalist ins the valley, you get this a lot. journalists in the valley are typically hidden from a lot of tech folks who think that tech is doing good for the world and

unabashedly, unapologetic thing and even questioning that is dangerous sometimes and i guess i'm wondering for the benefit of that, if there are parts of the culture or whatever that you took away from your time in tech? >> no, there is. this is like the-- i think the heart-- the heart of the book is ambivalence. so i think there was a lot that i appreciated about working in tech. i don't know if in my 30's i would go back and appreciate the same things, to be totally honest. i think i happen to be the right age and have like the right yearnings to be sort of an ideal employee in a certain way. in my 20's. i'm 32, like four years ago,

when it mattered. but, yeah, in my 20's just having proved here and not knowing someone from a different city and trying to find meaning, told here is your meaning, run with it. i think what i admired and appreciated was the camaraderie, the sort of commitment to a common project, a collective project, if you will, i liked that people had autonomy or seemed to have autonomy at least for a little while. i think that's actually sort of the problem is people having autonomy who don't necessarily have the authority to have at that autonomy or shouldn't necessarily about you there seemed to be some potential in that, even though often the people with the most autonomy sort of replicates like, now, power structures that exist and you know, have existed for years, but initially that was excite to ing to me. i think that--

there's one more thing that i actually really did enjoy and appreciate about start-up culture, oh, i think it's very earnest, someone who is constantly vacillating between detached mockery and deep painful earnestness, i don't know if you can relate. [laughter]. >> my entire life. >> anyone who is-- yeah. that they might be wrong, but i genuinely believe people in tech believe they're doing good for the world and i trust them when they say it, i think what's missing is more of like a -- i think the problems are systemic. i don't think that they are necessarily rooted in the individual although i'd be curious what you make of that given your reporting on uber and travis-- >> my book. >> i do wonder, like, i don't actually know if you're legally allowed to answer this

question, you just moved move to the next one if you want to, but do you feel like someone-- i've heard people say that uber couldn't exist if it didn't have this crazy culture. my question is should it exist and obviously that culture. that culture shouldn't exist and if you don't have at that culture and the company doesn't happen that maybe that's fine. but do you-- . >> can any of-- . >> do you feel like-- i'm sorry, do you think that-- >> where you're doing with this. >> do you see a structural explanation for his behavior, with unone related to incentives and the incentives of the business model or of the industry that could potentially be for giving that. >> i think you're hitting at the exact right thing. i think the whole, like if you boil down how all of this works, you're getting investment in your company, you have to hit the next level or whatever that is, whether that's users or whether that's,

revenue or something, and for most companies, can get kind of desperate so you have to do things that maybe might not be that-- >> legal. >> or legal, right. and i don't know, i think it's just baked into how a lot of this works, but i also think, i think there's justification, right, like the people who already sort of own the space, the incumbents, protected in ways that are not necessarily fair and you can kind of like believe-- and i'm not saying that this is wrong, but you can kind of believe in your own reasons for doing a lot of this stuff, right, so-- >> and also to just go back on my own argument, i think that people are in the same structural position and they're not a-- >> not specifically calling someone a-- >> you have to be a jerk to do well in this industry, right? depending who the ceo is. you know? >> right. >> i don't know, you tell me.

>> seems unfair to answer that. >> so i'm thinking about-- sorry, i'm sweating right now. >> i'm sorry. >> i'm thinking about, you know, i think some of you heard the term tech lash at this point. that's sort of a moment that we're in, like this, phenomenon and maybe someone thinks what tech brings about is bad and some might call a trough of disillusionment. >> we're all eating from the trough of disillusionment. >> that's me at like 11:00 at night when i get home. [laughte [laughter] >> , but i'm just, you know, you can you can wallo in this gnarly period for a long time and as a reporter, i'm wondering what the next part is. are we going to say that tech

is bad for long period of time? is that what we're saying or what's the-- what's the -- what is the -- where are we going, you know? tell me the future. >> this is great leverage for me in my future career as a futurist. [laughter] >> so what if i just wanted to work for google and i told them i was the new-- i just, i'm looking for a grip. yeah, i mean, i think tech -- i think potentially, gentler narrative for me right now would be not that tech is bad, but tech is boring and unimaginative. i just-- and what i mean by that is like there could be so much more, right? all of the-- forgive me, the tools are in place for there to be a much more interesting, vibrant, creative industry, more exploratory, more experimental. >> the problems we're attack

are not big enough? >> have you not heard this criticism? creative or, i think it's -- it's not to say that tech, some companies aren't bad, some are bad and doing bad things, but i guess i feel like there's so much we haven't tried yet and the industry is still relatively young or this -- i don't know, it's hard to just be like this generation of the industry because it's so rooted in the past and i don't want to say that it's exceptional in any way, but got to work with what you've got. i feel there's a lot we haven't tried with respect to kind of untangling some of the problems we found ourselves in now, which are related to things like privatization, commoditization, data collection, centralization, the reliance on ad networks, sort of atom ization and to scale

like spotify that wipes out-- >> sorry. an emergency alert. >> are you okay? is everything okay? >> sorry. >> well, if there's an emergency, i would think that everyone would want to know. i'm sorry. yeah, i don't know, i guess i just feel i don't know what comes next. i feel the structural, the incentive. until that changes we'll have companies for whom the highest position is to be a monopoly and i don't feel that that serves society best and i also feel that it's really unimaginative. i think there's a lot happening in the industry that's really cynical and that has to do with this kind of baked in spirit of

circumvention and i'm thinking of like there's a-- i don't mean to pick this out, this was from-- i was reading something earlier, but there's-- sorry, i'm choosing two paths as an example here, something like all of these-- huge hugely for me, lyft, and prefer to take public transportation, but do these circumvent civic participation or civic institutions, do they augment like mile ridership. and the other thing blasting one particular account that has marketed itself as an alternative to a college degree, and part of that rational is that you can get a job really quickly that pays you extremely well sort of an income jump, respectable, i get it, useful, valuable, but also

a way to avoid student debt that one might incur from getting a degree in english. for me-- . [laughter] >> like my nightmare to-- i have an english degree. i do not have an english degree, it's like a chip on my shoulder. rather the crisis here is we make it so hard to live that you need to orient your entire life like from your teenager years toward having a-- your education becomes instrumentalized in this way to get you a job. that's a social failure, i think, that's not how, what education should be necessarily in a functional enriched society. i think that also you have this like-- you have the student debt crisis, totally legitimate that you would want to-- that a person would want to launch themselves into a different career track to pay off their debt, to avoid debt, but again, these are the start-up model is to circumvent

social institutions, it's to privatize what should, i think, in a functional society be a public good or service. so, whether that's education or transportation. so, anyway, this is just my pitch for a different model, but i do think things have to change for that sort of business model to be less exciting to people, to be-- to not be the only option, right? >> i mean, it's hard because you know, a, salaries are always going to be way bigger when you're outside of the existing model, but, b, i think like it's just part of what i think disillusions people who don't want to to go into say, the public sector and incumbent companies and it's stuck in what it is, right? maybe they're not like creating something new, maybe they're just content in being at the status quo and i feel like part of what's exciting is the idea that you can break out, you know? so, i don't know. >> you work at a newspaper. [laughter]

>> and i work at a magazine sort of. so, infiltrated-- so there are certain things that are for a reason, i think, and i'm not making-- i'm not trying to defend like the dmv website, did they get my info, did they not? this is like roulette, who knows? it will be interesting, i'll just show up in three months. but i do think that the tech tends to value speed and scale and actually some things are perhaps better experienced at least, give me at least on the spiritual level, but i think also on the social level as processes, as something that builds over time, that is a collective effort that is, you know, reliant on-- i guess i'm thinking to your earlier question about tech versus publishing, like, this is an example i used before and i feel like i'm becoming a

windup doll one that's like dying, like something you can continuously change answer push your continual bible product, you iterate, ship a patch or-- i'm not in anymore. ... i do think the products represents values of industry and our culture doesn't necessarily value from this or

small-scale small business. look at cities. look at your cities, mike. you know what i mean, look around. it's not just intact. tech is an application of social moments. >> so i do -- there's a lot of people here. maybe we could start thinking of a few questions while ask if you last ones. i have a few friends that wanted me to ask you a few questions. they might not be your -- why are all tech people into -- >> not all tech people. [laughing] we spend too much time on the

internet. >> you don't have to actually and to that question. >> i have a section in the book, edm, but i need to stay awake and it can't drink any more caffeine or if i get pumped before i don't do anything, but i need to be pumped. [laughing] i wrote my book on edm you can tell the sections, you can tell when i was like really blasting it. it's really motivating, whatever. i think that edm is -- i think there's an energy i think that there's, i think it could be made quickly. i think it's music that has speed to it. i don't know. why do you think everyone loves edm? into someone in the audience i would love to ask? kyle. >> it's really hard to read a

practice based in the city and imagine getting a drum set. it's much easier to make music on a computer if you live in the city. i feel like that's happening all over, but like edm exploded in like 2008 and then ended in the 2000s and also coincides with rents getting more expensive. >> real good answer. [laughing] >> i don't know. there's an amazing profile in their magazine i believe by jessica but i could be wrong, probably wrong, i'm so wrong to whether it is by, about a pg. i've never said that out loud. and it's incredible. it explains that whole culture me a son who's ever been to an edm concert like this heart

probably couldn't withstand the drug stuff fun at an concert. anyway, i recommend reading that. >> another question from a friend. what will it take to get tech ceos to question that techno- solutions and philosophies that really undergird the valley narrative? meaning like sort of technological conservatism that tech can be the solution to some of the world's problems which i think a lot about. i think about mark zuckerberg mark zuckerberg's solution is more facebook. i don't know if that's a a vald path but it is about. >> mark zuckerberg has solutions for the problems he created. >> right. even if i don't beat up on

market, the larger thing is the answer to our problem is more of what we were doing, and will the underlying assumption here but that's not true at a guess i'm just wondering if will that ever change or do you think that sort of like the direction we are going? >> i don't know. if i knew what to change ceos mind i would be so wealthy. i wouldn't be here. i'd be rolling in money. [laughing] >> i think in facebook's defense, which is this going to be -- i love it. go. >> i'm going to get counsel. facebook does have unprecedented problems to deal with. i think for me the question is let's assume facebook exists and it will continue to exist, and mark zuckerberg will continue to lead the company.

what does it mean for facebook to ethically responsibly deal with itself? for me just because my perspective, that has to be a question about content moderation and also about speed. just because you can upload the video instantaneously doesn't mean you should be able to pick same deal with you too. what would it mean to throttle user-generated content? what would it mean if you had your content moderators full-time staff with full-time benefits with mental health benefits, if necessary, if you paid them a living salary and you invested in research to the repercussions of this sort of work. to have experts in all of your, region experts for all the places where facebook exists, whatever. if you're taking the steps and get like i don't have a diagnosis for i just made that up, but for facebook to invest

in a solution to itself i think would mean the total and utter collapse of facebook. for facebook, for the consumers, forget about the business side. to give an option for data retention or who data is shared with. i suspect a lot of people wouldn't care. i suspect a lot of people would also care plenty and that this could lead to the erosion of facebook as a business. you would probably get sort of a nice social platform where people just like posted articles about politics and no one cared. instead you have -- i think it would be the collapse class ofa functional entity. in terms of like changing the world, the question that always comes for whom and to what end and what costs? asked three questions. but i think there's no incentive

for people to give differently. there's no incentive for mark zuckerberg to be like you know would be great? if we spent all our money on making our contractors full-time hires. and so then the question becomes okay, what are the levers that still exist? i think they are incredibly minimal. you have like regulation potentially. we haven't tried that. and then you have like the collective leverage of people inside of these companies who come home i say we don't work on something might want to push for whatever policy. obviously they want the workers to organize -- they don't want their workers to organize anyway so that becomes a question of what are the reasons a person would be scared to organize? may be immigration, visa, something to do with health insurance or facebook paying them fat salaries, whatever. i just think that these all bigger questions than just like anyone company or anyone

industry. [inaudible] >> tell your friend i have no idea. sorry. >> does anyone have any question from the audience? there's a hand already. >> i would love to hear what you all are thinking about because i came unprepared. look at that, wow. >> there is a boom mic. >> i want to hear whether you had any response from this book by people in the book? like if your intention was to create a bridge in a way and tell the story of the people there, did anybody reach out to you in a way that was surprising like understanding and marry your sort of you that you're not expecting? >> people i've worked with

punches people in general? >> any of them. >> a lot of people have reached out, and that's been interesting and exciting for me especially when it is people have worked in the industry. i think the book, because it's observation and it's personal, i've heard from people, and nothing has surprised me exactly, but i'm sort of surprised, i think whatever you write about something people of a lot of opinions about you are going to get people saying this is a political or political enough, it's too political, too much personal story, not enough personal story. but i think -- i mean, i think the thing that always surprises me when people reach out and say i had exact same situation except i worked at a different company in a totally different

you. that to me is sort of obviously self-serving and underscores my point that these are systemic issues. but i still remain surprised i that because it's a personal book. you sort of want to believe these things only happened to you, and it can be devastating when you were actually this is like a systemic pattern. i don't know if that is answering your question. >> another one. >> i'm curious about, like a big part of it just as in the book which i'm halfway through, is youth and inexperience and how that plays into like just not going well. i'm sort of curious, like in previous companies than previous areas you totally worked her way up to get to the top 50 think there's a world in which, like young people being in charge of a company or other entity could work?

is that just like a recipe for failure? >> that's a great question, like could young people leave a political movement? [laughing] yeah. i don't think that age actually has much to do with it. i think that it is more to do with the values attached to that, like i think with text, technology moves quickly. the point of technology is to rid itself obsolete in many cases, it's i think people are always excited about youth because you correlates with the newest thing when people are interested in technology. but i think that the industry also has a sort of a historical slant that if you were you aren politics or in a different industry you would probably want to do the research and you would want to grab it in some

tradition. obviously, we can get into different things. i think the youth is, people who can behave in certain ways who are 18 who it's indistinguishable. we all know someone who is a millennial who acts like a baby boomer, but i think that people respond to their environment in a lot of ways. it's complicated. i don't think there's a at answer. i think tech accelerates its bad qualities for sure but that is more to do with the business side actually. that's my guess. >> lets go here. >> can you talk about the time between when "uncanny valley" came up, like what changed either with your approach to writing and the stories or just world in general? >> so the book comes out of an essay i wrote for a magazine, a

fictionalized essay. that started out as like the book review and sort it morphed into these anecdotes just my own life that it really wrote to entertain my friend dana. when it came out i really enjoyed writing it but didn't have a bigger project in mind. i've been taking notes on how to approach it and how to approach my work life like in objective literary inquiry. it's just like this is my worklife and maybe one day i'll write a book of short stories. that got a lot more attention than i thought it would. it was very surprising to me, a lot of people in tech read so that was when it started. emails e-mails started, e-mailsm people in tech saying you articulate something that was unsettling to me, too. anyway, it means a lot to me.

i sort of figured i'd write about in like ten or 20 years, but maybe -- i running joke with friends. you're going to write a novel about tech. no, probably not worthy of a novel. and then source started to put on the back burner and writing book reviews and a little bit about the tech industry not in a critical way but reflecting on the news. after the 2016 election i had this feeling what i've been experiencing was going to change. i i sort of had come been offerg under this assumption, the sane people would be there and saying values would be there and this was sort of inevitable, forever moment. super articulate. and then after the election itself at actually things were going to change and something it ended and it felt more urgent to write about it. because it seemed, i felt like i could no longer take for granted

what was there. i think my own feeling about the industry started to shift. it also coincided with like my feelings about my job shifting. i was doing sort of like content moderation content policy at a time would a lot more right wing material resurfacing, like far right wing, far, far right wing. i just don't like the game sort of felt like it was over for me what i was like my work makes me feel better. i don't know if i believe in the end game, and i don't know if this trade-off is worth it. probably i should go to law school. but i just took to feel like i had aged out my particular situation, and we looked around and started to think where am i going with this? what's the trajectory for someone like me? i had trouble with feeling good about my options, and it's not that they were not attainable.

i think i could have done anything, not to be arrogant, but i think this is an industry that's like if you believe and to try and you are a white woman with a college degree from a good liberal arts university, you are rewarded for nothing. in some ways, you know. [laughing] anyway, i think my personal feeling shifted, the political conversation shifted and it felt urgent in a way that it really didn't anticipate. >> i should affect a one sentence answer for you, sorry. >> we will go here and then you afterwards. this one right here, right here. >> i was wondering if it's a conscious decision for you? [inaudible] i was listening to women who had turned -- the others turned into

novels. was it a conscious decision for you? >> what were the other two books? >> the other one was the fear of silicon valley and other one was -- [inaudible] >> interesting. >> they both turned into novels. >> it was a thought, right, this is a litigious industry and i'm not -- [laughing] these are people who have a lot of wealth and power and they really don't like criticism. and they are not used to it either. i thought about writing it as a novel. my general feeling was nothing has happened to me here that i participated in that if i read fiction no one would believe me.

i think the woman coming from a technical position and as a woman, that people would ignore it or discredit it or undermine it in some way. it was important to be to write it as nonfiction. it was important to me that it not be misread as satire because there's a lot of stuff that's quite funny but actually the industry, the book, its documentation, right? it's just say how things are enough people are and how they speak could be misread as satire, and i feel very strongly that's not on me. [laughing] so nonfiction felt like the move, and i wanted it to be a personal story, i didn't want it to be a reported piece because knowing my own strengths and staying in my own lane kind of things. but yeah, yeah. >> we are -- wow.

should do one, maybe two more. >> i've been doing so many podcast i'm just ready to talk for an hour. >> that's great. just keep going. >> a lot of the book feels like really personal. i'm kind of curious as you are recalling the stories, like what were some of the emotions? were you angry when some of these, when you remembered some of these things, which is sad, happy or nostalgic? >> that's an interesting question. it was a little sad. a very useful document or corpus for me was my e-mail friends about my life in my 20s. this thing happen after work with this person i work with, what do you think this means? should i i be worried about th?

should i be excited about this? this conversation happen over three drinks. and what about to become an executive? [laughing] so rereading that felt like i was rereading, i have very friends with whom i write long emails. it's like reading a diary. i felt like i was reading this record of my own optimism and excitement and enthusiasm for the industry, as it increasingly reading my own disillusionment and frustration and anger in a lot of ways. especially writing the book in 2017-2018 i was very angry about things that were happening in the world, in the industry, with friends of mine. the book is from 2012-2016 and that was quite hard because i knew i was so close to it that he had to try to be detached, that detachment was like the best, the most emotionally honest for the long-term, that

anger often clarifies it to some other positions, but would probably take a while for me to understand. or an insight if not a physician. i guess i sort of like feel great affection and frustration with this past version of myself for buying in so hard and wanting some of those things. i don't know -- i think that's probably like anyone who writes personally who does research on themselves in this way. you have to treat it like a research project. i will say that it wasn't until he interviewed some former colleagues have got really, really mad here i think that's because of who i am which is like an ambivalent i potentially cowered person, that i'm constantly trying to give people the benefit of the doubt and even in this conversation i've been protecting people are protected by people who don't deserve it and haven't earned it and who wouldn't do the same for me, not that house to be

reciprocal. i'm just constantly going to the mat for people in ways you don't have, haven't proven any evidence they deserve it. talking to other people but shared experiences or shared institutions and their experiences was enraging, in some cases. but again these are not my stories. user places i spent time and people i spent time with, but i hope at some point, i hope is in my journalistic work those are not necessarily the specific stories but this is the think i can highlight as a journalist. but i think that generally it was more of this sorting through emotional stuff of being in my 20s. [laughing] >> that's good. let's get one last one. way in the back right there. i don't know if we have to wait for the boom mic.

>> i'm wondering if you find more meaning in your work now as a journalist and you did in tech? if so, why? >> a very good question. >> i do. i think that, but the don't want to say that's like, not that journalism is a more meaningful career and work in two and being a project manager. for me i found work that he is like something that makes sense for me that's interesting and exciting to me. i think a lot of what was exciting in the first place about the tech industry that may be interested in being and staying as an employee, being and staying in the industry, that's still really interesting to me. i just have found a better way to engage with it which is writing about it. it's kind of like stay in your

own lane kind of thing. this is actually what i potentially most useful, i hope, and that's meaningful to me. but i don't think that is like any sort of empirical value to one or the other. but yeah, i don't know, a personal question. >> i think that's good. >> do you ever wish you were a project manager at google? [laughing] >> no offense. >> just finding a place. i feel very lucky to to have fd a place that makes sense right now. i don't want to take it for granted. >> that's very nice. everyone, please give a big round of applause. [applause] >> she's going to be signing books.

i don't know where the desk is. >> thank you, guys for coming and listening. this was quite long. thank you. [inaudible conversations] >> tonight on booktv started at eight eastern highlights from our "in depth" programs. get close to a good book tonight. tv, on c-span2. >> c-span is round-the-clock coverage of the federal response to the coronavirus pandemic, and it's all available on demand at c-span.org/coronavirus watch why does briefings, updates from

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