Metadata#
- Author(s): Robin Sloan
- Number of pages: 259
- Year published: 2017
- Year read: 2018
Review#
A funny-enough, strange, and well-observed book about Silicon Valley narcissism/tone-deaf transhumanism. It starts VERY strong, but progressively loses steam and ends on a bit of a whimper.
Robin Sloan has a really sharp eye and satirizes the tech industry super effectively: e.g. the romanticized treatment of being “on the spectrum”, i.e. mono-focused ~~PASSION~~, i.e. sleeping at the hipster office so you can churn out code, i.e. a work culture that mostly privileges young men without dependents. The post-human/Singularity types who eat utopian/post-apocalyptic non-food since our evolved digestive system is inefficient and evolution should be ~~DISRUPTED~~. The fetishization of productivity. Even just the frisson of merging code changes to the /master branch without even making a PR! (MADNESS.)
The novel - which focuses on a young programmer named Lois, who codes real good but is pretty repulsed by this Bay Area silliness - is a cry for hedonic pleasure, for inefficient and uncontrollable organisms, for YEAST. Which is great. And I was like, “oh wow is this a smart, fun book or what, heheh that bay area amirite”. And I read on, eagerly anticipating the great, philosophical punchline that I just KNEW had to be coming.
And I read.
And I read…
And, basically, it never comes? Which is why this was a 4-star instead of 5-star experience. The setup is so superb, our crazy world so accurately observed, that I was SO READY for that philosophical whammy. Hoo well.