uncanny valley was a weirdly intimate look into a bubble i know all too well. i congratulated myself for understanding wiener's references to both dead french theorists and viral vc tweets, remembered my own first encounters with cowen-style rationalists and custom slack reacts, then wondered whether it was self-indulgent to read a 200-page inside joke. but so what? i've grown to expect every tech piece i read to be either a how-to guide or an investigative take-down. at its core, uncanny valley is neither of the above. instead, it had the primary effect of making me feel a little less alone, arranging my intuitions into beautiful words and familiar representations. so the systems-level message remains implicit, concealed in snapshots of people she (and we) have known and places she (and we) have been. technology - like politics, religion, media, and other industries trying to Change The World - will always come with a certain dose of surrealism. reality is twisted to fit a theory of change that always makes room for our sustenance, where there are sometimes missteps but always agency. wiener doesn't completely condemn that self-importance: it's all too human. through her own story, she shows how a worldview that forefronts jobs and companies can make us forget our subjectivity - that there are options beyond the kool-aid - that there's always an option to power off. jan 26, 2020
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