logo

57 pages 1 hour read

Anna Wiener

Uncanny Valley: A Memoir

Nonfiction | Autobiography / Memoir | Adult | Published in 2020

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Part 2, Chapters 22-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Part 2: “Scale”

Chapter 22 Summary

Wiener’s narration acknowledges the immense privilege and freedom of her position: “I had reached the promised land for millennial knowledge work […] And I knew, even then, that I would regret it” (185). The rhythm and sensation of her daily work begins to resemble that of her leisure time, both informed by constant stimulation and the associative, compulsive thought patterns of the internet. In a novel stylistic turn, Wiener’s prose mimics the experience of reading and interacting in a space “sick with user-generated opinions and misinformation” while feeling she exists in “a million places at once” (186). Through a poetic litany of search terms, she gives the reader a visceral sense of the internet’s “collective howl” as she, along with her peers—an entire generation of internet users—“[give] themselves away at every opportunity” (187). Wiener feels her own brain as a sort of “trash vortex” devoid of original thought. Turning to contemporary literature for relief, she recognizes hallmarks of similarly internet-addled brains, a desperate, searching, trivia-studded quality of the writing lacking in deeper meaning. In contrast to the wealth and privilege acknowledged at the opening of the chapter, Wiener ends by emphasizing how empty her emotional and intellectual life feels at this time: “Just me and my id, hanging out, clicking” (190).

Chapter 23 Summary

Wiener receives a message from the CEO of the mobile analytics startup asking her to rejoin the company on the marketing team. She considers accepting, still susceptible to the desire to prove herself to the CEO. She visits New York and notices a surprising swell of contentment in herself. Engaging in simple, tactile activities such as cleaning out a storage space, finding old mementos, she says: “I felt myself returning to myself” (192). She enjoys the newfound mobility of her high salary, while feeling dismay at the widespread gentrification in her old neighborhoods. She notes an uncanny quality to this urban development, in which “the city was beginning to look like a generic idea, perhaps sprung from the mind of a real estate developer, of what a wealthy metropolis should be” (194).

 

Towards the end of her trip, she attends an inspiring dance performance choreographed by a friend. Afterwards she feels frustration at the way wealth and resources are allocated: towards corporations and technology, which she sees as no more valuable than artistic enterprises that enrich cultural and civic life. Upon returning to San Francisco she appreciates the city’s beauty with new awareness of its changing aesthetics, its authentic structure giving way to an engineered sameness: “Silicon Valley might have promoted a style of individualism, but scale bred homogeneity” (198). She closes on an eerie image of a pair of minimalist wool sneakers bought on the recommendation of coworkers, which sit unworn in her home by the door: an object of mundane comfort alluding to a profound sense of loss.

Chapter 24 Summary

Wiener instigates a social media debate with the famous founder and CEO of a successful startup named Patrick, who tweets an argument that books should be made to increase one’s rate of learning. Wiener responds with a strong statement refuting this suggestion. Stalking Patrick in an internet search, she feels a surprising fondness when she stumbles upon a picture of him from high school; she follows up on her first post with an apology, tagging him in reply. The two connect over email and meet for lunch. Patrick charms Wiener, projecting a sense of decisiveness and drive while she betrays a self-effacing aimlessness, processing “fourteen years of liberal arts education and aspirational upper-middle-class messaging in real time” (203).

Wiener feels a great discrepancy of power and status between them, but they still strike up a friendship. She notices a tendency in herself to excuse his flighty behavior, flattered by his attention despite herself. Out in the Mission one day, Wiener runs into an old coworker from the analytics startup, who informs her that the company’s enigmatic CTO has left the company. When asked what the CTO might do next, her coworker replies that perhaps the CTO doesn’t want to do anything—a statement that echoes and emphasizes Wiener’s own feelings of displacement and drift.

Part 2, Chapters 22-24 Analysis

Chapters 22 through 24 demonstrate Wiener’s tenuous sense of self and her deepening skepticism about life inside the tech industry. Wiener describes her distracted, frenzied pace of thought, and her tendency to lose herself in internet searching with little time for reflection. In Chapter 23 she feels more grounded during a trip home to New York City, although the rapid gentrification of her hometown unsettles her. In Chapter 24, Wiener’s friendship with Patrick surprises her in its ease and substance, but it highlights Wiener’s lack of direction and reluctance to follow her instincts.

Wiener’s search for meaning manifests through her innovative use of language and rhetorical questioning. Chapter 22 recreates the hectic mental gymnastics common to internet surfing with a list of images, insights, blunt sentences, and sentence fragments. This technique gives the reader a visceral impression of Wiener’s unfulfilled inner life, even as it stops short of reflection or full articulation: “I searched for answers, excuses, context, conclusions: Define: technocracy. California ideology. Jeffersonian democracy. Electronic agora. Ebola. State slogans. New dark mole […](188). Chapter 23 returns to linear, anecdotal narration, but with heightened emphasis on Wiener’s battle to reconcile her work in tech with an acute consciousness of its flaws. She questions her surroundings in New York—“The new version of the city was inscrutable, baffling. Who wanted this? Who was it for?” (193)—and questions herself aloud to a friend: “Was I trying too hard to make this mean something?” (196). In Chapter 24, Wiener breaks her passive voyeurism to start an argument with Patrick but retreats into it when she fails to hold him to accountable consistently. While her sharp commentary and analysis signal character development, her frustrated indecision persists, building unresolved tension.

In these chapters Wiener grapples with her individual privilege. She questions the allocation of resources in society but stops short of renouncing her own desire for wealth and security. Her explicit disclosures of her salary and the images of gentrification throughout various city neighborhoods emphasize Wiener’s new economic status. She calls money “a key,” a way of accessing the exclusive private spaces gobbling up her city. In Chapter 24, while befriending Patrick, Wiener remains confused by her place within the larger milieu of tech that she critiques: “It was easy to interrogate everyone’s relationship to power and status except my own” (207). Her increasing wealth corresponds to a hunger for social coherence or inner contentment, which her otherwise rich industry continually fails to provide.

blurred text
blurred text
blurred text
blurred text