Burn Book: A Tech Love Story

Kara Swisher seems to attract a lot of ire from my circles of social media, claiming she has spent a lot of time being a stenographer to power for Silicon Valley oligarchs, or at least a useful tool in their PR machine. But if that's the case, Swisher seems to be trying to morph her career into something else and the result is a memoir that's pretty interesting to me regarding the threat wealthy titans of tech pose to us in the 21st century.

I do wish she would rely less on the Arrested Development "Narrator: Contradiction of the above statement" meme.

Just average to me. I enjoyed it, and the writing was good and I'm looking forward to more content from the author but this book was ok to me.

Exactly what you'd expect from Swisher, which is why it's so good.

Kara is a thoughtful and reflective story-teller. The memoir provides a unique and up close look through the lens of a someone who covered the tech beat for decades. Some of my favorite quotes -

French philosopher Paul Virilio has a quote I think about a lot: “When you invent the ship, you also invent the shipwreck; when you invent the plane, you also invent the plane crash; and when you invent electricity, you invent electrocution…. Every technology carries its own negativity, which is invented at the same time as technical progress.”

“No wonder, then, that self-congratulation and self-deception are now a part of the Valley’s ethos, right up there with fearless risk-taking, maniacal effort and programming genius,”

“The best ideas have to win,” Jobs insisted over and over to me. He utterly rejected the idea of speed (move fast) and destruction (break things).

Fun book. Mostly stories you'd know if you listen to any of her podcasts. 

Few see it as clearly as Kara Swisher.

Lots of personal anecdotes about the titans of tech. Nothing that really changes your opinion about anyone (except maybe I am a little less anti-Jobs – but only a little), but still a really interesting account of one person's front row seat to the evolution of the internet and social media in the modern era. Well worth your time.