Pan4ColumnsMoore writes this with piercing realism and humor that plays down just how serious her themes are ... I didn’t like I Am Homeless.
Anna Wiener
MixedThe White ReviewThese corporations are so omnipresent that they can remain nameless; this is not a wink to the informed reader, but a writer highlighting how embedded contemporary life is in her subject ... The descriptions tear the company away from the brand and makes their products seem mundane: a bargain basement, an electronics company. It gives the book a special tinge of darkness, as if written from the other end of history, when these brands are not even memorable. Of course, though, it isn’t: rejecting the brands is a single gesture of resistance in a book that offers little critique of the ‘ecosystem’ beyond simple description ... Wiener is remarkably perceptive about these transitions in San Francisco, and its improbable couplings of old and new (businesses, people, buildings, traditions, ideas of the city) ... Wiener’s awakening to the repercussions of her work, alongside a rising awareness about the implications of what we know post-Snowden about surveillance capitalism, forms the background to her disillusionment with Silicon Valley ... But Wiener’s awakening comes too late for her, and for her readers. Although it’s a joy to read, we did not need a jokey description of the contemporary economy that halfway through remembers to admit that there are real-life repercussions to what was only discussed on her Slack channels and in parties with her Silicon Valley friends. And in a book that rejoices in description, those implications are rarely recounted ... Wiener’s tone – hilarious, entertaining, feverish – sets her up as a ferocious critic, yet she mostly replicates Silicon Valley claims that technology is a service or resource, even though the industry’s avowed ambition is to change the world.
