My first impression of Silicon Valley vs Uncanny Valley : A Memoir by Anna Wiener

Fresh off the boat, San Francisco Bay Area / Silicon Valley was my first home in the US of A. Above is a screenshot of an old blog post from my now defunct Live Journal describing my very first impressions, written 4 years after the said impressions were first registered. The static nature of the content is a tell-tale sign that it belongs to a prehistoric time when blog posts and not reaction videos ruled the day. 

Silicon Valley was and is a bubble, floating in an ether of its own making, far above in the exosphere and beyond the comprehension of the rest of America and the world. It is a strange place full of contradictions that questions its own existence. Is it for real? How could such a place exist where a roof over your head - the rent of a one-bed apartment could set you back $4-5K/month easily but you could get a filling burrito from a hole in the wall eatery for $5?

Anna Wiener calls it the uncanny valley in her memoir, "Uncanny Valley." Documenting her move from East coast to SFO after accepting a job at an eBook startup,  Wiener's memoir provides access to the inside track of the Silicon valley in 2010s populated with 20-somethings. Reflecting on the peculiar feelings that Silicon Valley evokes, the title could also be a play on words pointing to Japanese roboticist Masahiro Mori's original concept of the uncanny valley. 

You know you have arrived in downtown San Francisco if you can spot homeless people wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the logos of Silicon Valley companies taking a shit on the sidewalk. A city of opposites where the homeless junkie shares the streets with hoodied 20-something CEO of a startup, both probably wearing the same hoodies although most tech companies have a strict policy not to give away company merchandise to people who do not provide any value to the company.

As you walk/read/proceed across the (uncanny) valley in the shadow of meth, you will fear no evil, for Ms.Wiener walks among angels(investors), evangelists, CEOs, CTOs and brogrammers who would rather overdose on protein bars and vitamin D pills. Reading the 2010s version of the tech boom, I realize the Valley has not changed at all from the dotcom boom era of the late 90s-early 2000s that I briefly brushed against. It is still riding the roaring twenties. It will always be the roaring twenties in Silicon Valley. I am older and too tired to keep up. I am glad we got out of that forever young place while we were still nimble to make a break.

Most of Wiener's observations about San Francisco's tech industry elicit a sigh of relief from me. It is similar to the calm feeling you get after committing the premeditated murder of your Facebook account. You no longer have to play catch-up with your 500 'friends' posts and their photos living the high/lie-life. You can live at your own pace, stress-free.The tech-bros in Japanese denim can micro-dose and meditate on their next big disruption or take nootropics and bio-hack their way to being the pioneers of the better world they aim to create. 

But you are free. You are delighted to find that you are still in a world where you can be a wee bit evil and you are not pressured to think different all the time. You are no longer part of the Silicon Valley ecosystem. It could be a different planet for all you care. In case you still want to keep in touch, once in a blue moon, read inter-planetary dispatches like Ms.Wiener's. She does a really good job as an outsider looking in. The outsider who almost became an insider and bowed out before being sucked into the cult of the Valley.

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The Audacity of a Rich and Connected Narcissist: Elizabeth Holmes and her Monumental Fiasco called Theranos

Thank you John Carreyrou for an un-putdownable expose on one of Silicon Valley's greatest screw-ups.Also highly commendable are the brave ex-Theranos employees like Erika Cheung, Tyler Shultz, Ian Gibbons and others who risked their lives and careers for divulging the information they were privy to in order to protect the lives of ordinary Americans. 

The Silicon Valley startup Theranos and its founder Elizabeth Holmes was willing to put millions of lives at risk with fake blood test results while lying through the teeth to federal agencies to make her scam company a success. John Carreyrou started following the scent of this sham of a start-up, first through the investigative pieces he wrote for his employer - The Wall Street Journal. But a scam of such monumental proportion could not be contained in a couple of articles and it became the book Bad Blood: Secret and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup.

I remember the days when Elizabeth Holmes, Theranos founder and CEO, was everywhere - from NPR to Hillary Clinton fundraiser. Media loved her - a female founder of a highly successful Silicon valley startup, probably the only one of a startup of this stature. A girl (19 year old when she started the company) - rich, powerful, intelligent, blonde and beautiful - a girl who broke into the proverbial boy's club, what is not to like, right? She had the right credentials for a start-up CEO - she was a Stanford drop out, under thirty and hungry for success, plus she wore the black Steve Jobs turtle necks, to play the part from neck to the boot.

To me, reading the book, articles and her interviews, Elizabeth Holmes comes off as a rich and connected narcissist who thought she knew more than 99.99% of humanity and could con them with miniaturized blood tests (which she couldn’t miniaturize because there were reasons why the people with experience in the industry had not done it yet) because in her mind she was the once in a blue moon tech-entrepreneurial genius – along the lines of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates. And there were rich white men confirming her genius and expressing approval by contributing millions to her vaporware dream.

She was a charismatic charmer who had populated the board of Theranos with the aging American stalwarts ranging from George Shultz and James Mattis to Henry Kissinger who fell for her so-called new-found technology hook, line and sinker. Her investors included Larry Ellison, Kraft family, the Waltons, the DeVoses and Rupert Murdoch. With such big names backing her who would have the nerve say this company is perpetuating a sham which is nothing bigger than a middle school science project.

With billions in funding and billionaires backing her up, Elizabeth Holmes recruited the best and brightest in the industry but Theranos forever remained a revolving door. The brlliant minds enticed by the charisma and 'vision' of the CEO were found leaving after a few months or a year burnt by Holmes' outright lying and ruthlessness and the company's unethical practices. She was also aided in this process by her boyfriend, Sunny Balwani, another Silicon Valley entrepreneur, twenty plus years her senior, but just as cunning and ruthless. The two kept their relationship secret from the board of the company for the longest possible time while Balwani continued being the President of the start-up.

Bad Blood is an excellent investigative revelation which documents the fall of a rich, powerful and a ruthless bully, lawyer-ed up to the gills that not a single person, unless you are a billionaire yourself with billions to spare, would ever dream of going against. If you like stories where the underdog (in this case the tortured employees and deceived patients) trounces Goliath in a story with a happy ending, this is it.

There are lots of videos on Youtube featuring Holmes and Theranos, if you are interested. There is also a film coming out soon based on the book starring Jennifer Lawrence as the controversial founder of Theranos.

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