Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Wiener joins a new team at work, “Terms of Service,” designed to deal with “semi-legal” issues flooding into the company’s support inbox: copyright violations, scams, spam, exploitation, and threats of violence, among other concerns. Wiener struggles to reconcile the startup’s idealistic vision for speech and exchange with a rigorous enforcement of rules. The issues arising on the platform—an international hub of interaction—challenge Wiener’s team and expose their blind spots and their lack of expertise, as well as the company’s ignorance of abuse on its platform: “The company did not seem aware of how common it was for our tools to be abused. […] There were four of us for the company’s nine million users” (211).

The company expands and gradually becomes more diverse. The U.S. secretary of Housing and Urban Development visits the startup as part of an initiative to bring technological resources to people in low-income housing; his visit highlights the absurdity of the startup’s pseudo-governmental décor. Wiener ponders what it means for him—an accomplished politician and public servant—to cater to “the growing power center of Silicon Valley, with its baby tyrants” who think they have the solution to everything (214). At the end of the presentation the secretary receives a personalized company hoodie as a gift.