美国国家公共电台 NPR Interview: Anna Wiener, Author Of 'Uncanny Valley'

Interview: Anna Wiener, Author Of 'Uncanny Valley'

SCOTT SIMON, HOST:

When Anna Wiener was a 20-something, she left her job at a literary agency in New York and moved to California to join the high-tech¹ world of inflection points, designpreneurs, blitzscaling, upleveling and disruptors, the world she came to see from the inside as destructive, intrusive², dominating and dangerous. Her memoir³ is "Uncanny Valley." And Anna Wiener, who writes about Silicon⁴ Valley online for The New Yorker and other publications, joins us from the studios of KQED in San Francisco. Thanks so much for being with us.

ANNA WIENER: Thank you for having me. What a delight to hear you say the word designpreneur, Scott Simon.

(LAUGHTER)

SIMON: Well, it's the first time I've said it. And it does raise the question, how would you describe the Internet to a medieval farmer?

WIENER: Oh, my God. You can run from yourself, but you can't hide.

SIMON: Yeah. Well, we should explain. This was a question you actually got, right?

WIENER: Yes. This was a standard interview question at one of the startups that I worked for. It's a question that I asked many a young person looking for a job that had nothing to do with farming or really understanding how the Internet functions. So (laughter)...

SIMON: So what was the whole idea behind a question like that, or was there an idea?

WIENER: It's actually one of these things that looks absurd on its face but was quite useful to ask people in an interview. A question like that reveals how people see the world and whether they explain things with a systems view or in terms of a social dimension or - you know, whether someone says, it's like a gigantic book, or if they start explaining, you know, packets, that actually tells you a lot about how someone thinks.

SIMON: So how does someone with your literary bent⁵ wind up in Silicon Valley anyway?

WIENER: I was working in book publishing and, at 25, was sort of just trying to find my place in the world and trying to find a career path that felt like it had momentum⁶. I wanted to be in an industry that felt exciting and felt like there was a future. And tech ticked all of those boxes.

SIMON: You said that big data just became mesmerizing⁷.

WIENER: Oh, yeah. I found that looking at these datasets for different products really showed me what people were doing on the Internet in these digital spaces. And it told a story about how people were engaging with otherwise intangible products. So I think data is also often used to confirm one's assumptions or confound one's assumptions. And so for me, I just found that actually quite compelling on a storytelling level.

SIMON: Is it also a little - forgive me - voyeuristic⁸? I mean, a lot of people aren't aware of the fact that we're being monitored.

WIENER: Oh, absolutely. And I think that that is one of the questions that I want to raise in the book, which is that I think not only do most people not know that their data is being collected and stored indeterminately but that there are these third-party tools, like the company that I worked for, that if you're using an app, the app is sending that data to these other companies. And so some of them could be quite small and could have employees who can access those datasets.

SIMON: I want to note before we go any further that some of the largest tech companies in America (laughter) - the largest, in fact - are among NPR's funders. I'll just mention a few - Amazon, Google, Lyft, Uber. Why don't you in this book mention the companies for which you worked? I mean, and you can guess a lot of them. I will...

WIENER: (Laughter).

SIMON: Yeah.

WIENER: Yeah. They're not - it's not a secret. It's quite easy to find out where I used to work. And I was hoping that by not naming companies and by referring to their functions it would drive home what these companies actually do, whether it's absurd or frightening. And I also just didn't think it mattered. I do think a lot of these companies, and also executives, are interchangeable in a certain way.

SIMON: The work environment, as we must say these days, that you describe - not even a patriarchy so much as an adolescent boy hierarchy⁹.

WIENER: (Laughter) It's like going to summer camp. First are the perks¹⁰ you see, as there were in my office - skateboards and rip sticks (ph) and all of these snacks, you know, as if we couldn't feed ourselves or something. That is largely about attracting employees and retaining them. It's also, I think, about this idea that things are done differently in Silicon Valley, a way not to recognize that these are businesses rather than, you know, fun endeavors. But I think that - or, you know, world historical missions. And if anything, it sort of is a cover for some of the somewhat darker side of these companies.

SIMON: Which includes its treatment of women.

WIENER: Yes. It's funny. Some people have been asking me, like, what was it like to be a woman in Silicon Valley? And it's sort of like, what is it like to be a woman anywhere? But I think that (laughter) I feel like I had a relatively¹¹ positive experience given the range of things that have happened to women that I know. I think that I was subject to quite a bit of sexism. But I do think that you see it everywhere. You see it from sexist asides to the undervaluing of soft-skilled labor¹², what's understood to be emotional work rather than strategic work. There's also the sense of a boys club that is impenetrable. And you are just constantly trying to prove yourself. There's also this culture of, like, having an open bar in the office and taking employees on, like, largely unsupervised vacations and a sort of rowdy, irreverent culture that doesn't always acknowledge people who might be vulnerable in those spaces.

SIMON: What began to shake your belief in what you were doing?

WIENER: I was working at this data analytics startup. And I enjoyed that work to a certain extent. But I wasn't paying much attention to the economy or the ecosystem¹³ that that company was a part of. And, obviously, there's a big distance between product analytics and the NSA, but when Edward Snowden's revelations came out, I had been on the job for a few months and I didn't connect the dots that there was something that has now come to be understood as surveillance capitalism¹⁴ and that it might have echoes in the government and - or does have echoes, you know, in the government. That, to me, in hindsight, was a moral test for the industry - the Snowden revelations. And the fact that nothing happened sort of tells you everything about where we are now.

I just started to feel that the - there was such a gap between my expectations and the narratives¹⁵ that Silicon Valley was promoting and what I actually saw on the ground that it made me feel like I was foolish or wrong. And then when the election happened and, suddenly, there was all this scrutiny¹⁶ on tech, I started to feel that my instincts and my sort of unsettled feeling about the industry was - perhaps there was more reason for that.

SIMON: Anna Wiener - her book "Uncanny Valley" - thank you so much for being with us.

WIENER: Thank you so much.

1 high-tech   

adj.高科技的

参考例句：

• The economy is in the upswing which makes high-tech services in more demand too.经济在蓬勃发展，这就使对高科技服务的需求量也在加大。
• The quest of a cure for disease with high-tech has never ceased. 人们希望运用高科技治疗疾病的追求从未停止过。

2 intrusive   

adj.打搅的；侵扰的

参考例句：

• The cameras were not an intrusive presence.那些摄像机的存在并不令人反感。
• Staffs are courteous but never intrusive.员工谦恭有礼却从不让人感到唐突。

3 memoir   

n.[pl.]回忆录，自传；记事录

参考例句：

• He has just published a memoir in honour of his captain.他刚刚出了一本传记来纪念他的队长。
• In her memoir,the actress wrote about the bittersweet memories of her first love.在那个女演员的自传中，她写到了自己苦乐掺半的初恋。

4 silicon   

n.硅(旧名矽)

参考例句：

• This company pioneered the use of silicon chip.这家公司开创了使用硅片的方法。
• A chip is a piece of silicon about the size of a postage stamp.芯片就是一枚邮票大小的硅片。

5 bent   

n.爱好，癖好；adj.弯的；决心的，一心的

参考例句：

• He was fully bent upon the project.他一心扑在这项计划上。
• We bent over backward to help them.我们尽了最大努力帮助他们。

6 momentum   

n.动力，冲力，势头；动量

参考例句：

• We exploit the energy and momentum conservation laws in this way.我们就是这样利用能量和动量守恒定律的。
• The law of momentum conservation could supplant Newton's third law.动量守恒定律可以取代牛顿第三定律。

7 mesmerizing   

adj.有吸引力的，有魅力的v.使入迷( mesmerize的现在分词 )

参考例句：

• I think you must be mesmerizing me, Charles. 查尔斯，我想你一定在对我施催眠术啦。 来自辞典例句
• The attendant one-dimensional wave equation has mesmerizing harmonic properties. 伴生的一元波平衡具有迷人的和谐特性。 来自电影对白

8 voyeuristic   

adj.喜好窥阴的

参考例句：

• On the other hand, perhaps the author of the spyware just has voyeuristic tendencies. 不过，也可能程序作者只是有窥阴癖而已。 来自互联网
• Hitchcock also a perverse thrill out of taking audiences on a voyeuristic roller-coaster ride. 希区柯克也有有害刺激的考虑受众的偷窥过山车旅程。 来自互联网

9 hierarchy   

n.等级制度；统治集团，领导层

参考例句：

• There is a rigid hierarchy of power in that country.那个国家有一套严密的权力等级制度。
• She's high up in the management hierarchy.她在管理阶层中地位很高。

10 perks   

额外津贴，附带福利，外快( perk的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• Perks offered by the firm include a car and free health insurance. 公司给予的额外待遇包括一辆汽车和免费健康保险。
• Are there any perks that go with your job? 你的工作有什么津贴吗？

11 relatively   

adv.比较...地，相对地

参考例句：

• The rabbit is a relatively recent introduction in Australia.兔子是相对较新引入澳大利亚的物种。
• The operation was relatively painless.手术相对来说不痛。

12 labor   

n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦

参考例句：

• We are never late in satisfying him for his labor.我们从不延误付给他劳动报酬。
• He was completely spent after two weeks of hard labor.艰苦劳动两周后，他已经疲惫不堪了。

13 ecosystem   

n.生态系统

参考例句：

• This destroyed the ecosystem of the island.这样破坏了岛上的生态系统。
• We all have an interest in maintaining the integrity of the ecosystem.维持生态系统的完整是我们共同的利益。

14 capitalism   

n.资本主义

参考例句：

• The essence of his argument is that capitalism cannot succeed.他的论点的核心是资本主义不能成功。
• Capitalism began to develop in Russia in the 19th century.十九世纪资本主义在俄国开始发展。

15 narratives   

记叙文( narrative的名词复数 )； 故事； 叙述； 叙述部分

参考例句：

• Marriage, which has been the bourne of so many narratives, is still a great beginning. 结婚一向是许多小说的终点，然而也是一个伟大的开始。
• This is one of the narratives that children are fond of. 这是孩子们喜欢的故事之一。

16 scrutiny   

n.详细检查，仔细观察

参考例句：

• His work looks all right,but it will not bear scrutiny.他的工作似乎很好，但是经不起仔细检查。
• Few wives in their forties can weather such a scrutiny.很少年过四十的妻子经得起这么仔细的观察。