Uncanny Valley (memoir)

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".^[1] 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.^[2] 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.^[3] 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.^[4]

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."^[5]

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."^[6]