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Burn Book: A Tech Love Story
From award-winning journalist Kara Swisher comes a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead.
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.
When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of “listening in the heating ducts” and prompted Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once observe: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’”
While still in college, Swisher got her start at The Washington Post, where she became one of the few people in journalism interested in covering the nascent Internet. She went on to work for The Wall Street Journal, joining with Walt Mossberg to start the groundbreaking D: All Things Digital conference, as well as pioneering tech news sites.
Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat—figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally.
Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.
Part memoir, part history, Burn Book is a necessary chronicle of tech’s most powerful players. This is the inside story we’ve all been waiting for about modern Silicon Valley and the biggest boom in wealth creation in the history of the world.
When tech titans crowed that they would “move fast and break things,” Kara Swisher was moving faster and breaking news. While covering the explosion of the digital sector in the early 1990s, she developed a long track record of digging up and reporting the facts about this new world order. Her consistent scoops drove one CEO to accuse her of “listening in the heating ducts” and prompted Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg to once observe: “It is a constant joke in the Valley when people write memos for them to say, ‘I hope Kara never sees this.’”
While still in college, Swisher got her start at The Washington Post, where she became one of the few people in journalism interested in covering the nascent Internet. She went on to work for The Wall Street Journal, joining with Walt Mossberg to start the groundbreaking D: All Things Digital conference, as well as pioneering tech news sites.
Swisher has interviewed everyone who matters in tech over three decades, right when they presided over an explosion of world-changing innovation that has both helped and hurt our world. Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Sheryl Sandberg, Bob Iger, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Meg Whitman, Peter Thiel, Sam Altman, and Mark Zuckerberg are just a few whom Swisher made sweat—figuratively and, in Zuckerberg’s case, literally.
Despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone.
320 pages, Hardcover
First published February 27, 2024
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March 10, 2024
18th book for 2024.
Audiobook—Author Reading
When I was a psychology undergraduate at university in Australia in the 1990s I was given access to the university VAX computers as part of our compulsory statistics course. This was still a time when typing up an essay, with errors corrected in tippex was seen as fancy, most students still handwrote course assignments, and most professors still hadn't learnt of email, and HTML was a few years away.
What my professor didn't know was that having a VAX account came along with Internet access and when I realized this I went wild. Suddenly I had access to email and Usenet discussion groups. On a backgammon group I suggested we stop talking about games and actually play them, and so ended up running the first International BG tournament through my statistics account—non-trivial as email was the sole form of communication for players (how do you show a board? how do you roll dice in a way that players see as fair?). My professor commended me for being so hard working as my time online was audited.
It's clear from her account that Swisher got the Internet as I did, and took the jump, leaving a golden path to politics reporter at the Washington Post to the (then) very niche job of tech reporter on the West Coast. She was there at the beginning and broke many key stories on Silicon Valley as it developed, and in the process becoming a Silicon Valley icon herself.
So this book should have been a easy win for me. However, it turned out to be a vapid nothingburger. The book is made up of chapters where Swisher mostly bashes Internet founders as narcissistic white man children—something I can get behind—but her analysis is so shallow it basically exists at the level of name calling. The Google Founders are labelled the weird twins and criticised in a mild way for ripping off intellectual property. Mark Zuckerberg is apparently still a teenage arsehole that sweats a lot when he's nervous. Bezos is super ambitious and given a star for getting internet delivery sorted out—but is also an arsehole. Musk was apparently a great guy until he bought Twitter and ruined it for Swisher (what about all the shitty things he did before then with Tesla??). Steve Jobs was an arsehole, but a visionary and so he gets a pass. Nothing she says is interesting or deep or new here.
The other chapters are a sort of Wikipedia style summary of her life. She got a job here, she dated so and so, married someone else, had a child, started this business or that business. None of it is anywhere deep or personal enough to be of much interest. Most of this seems to be either to puff-up her self worth or aid in her slagging off of this or that boss from decades past. She also has this annoying habit of constantly talking about how "tough" she is, how "mean but fair" she is. Isn't that what any decent journalist is?
The only thing I'll take from the book is Sergey Brin's baby shower in 2008, where the rich and famous attendees were forced to choose between wearing nappies or onesies, and could drink expensive vodka dripping from an ice statue's nipple.
Normally I don't give one-stars, as I usually abandon these sorts of books before the end, but since I finished this one I'll rate it.
1-star.
Audiobook—Author Reading
When I was a psychology undergraduate at university in Australia in the 1990s I was given access to the university VAX computers as part of our compulsory statistics course. This was still a time when typing up an essay, with errors corrected in tippex was seen as fancy, most students still handwrote course assignments, and most professors still hadn't learnt of email, and HTML was a few years away.
What my professor didn't know was that having a VAX account came along with Internet access and when I realized this I went wild. Suddenly I had access to email and Usenet discussion groups. On a backgammon group I suggested we stop talking about games and actually play them, and so ended up running the first International BG tournament through my statistics account—non-trivial as email was the sole form of communication for players (how do you show a board? how do you roll dice in a way that players see as fair?). My professor commended me for being so hard working as my time online was audited.
It's clear from her account that Swisher got the Internet as I did, and took the jump, leaving a golden path to politics reporter at the Washington Post to the (then) very niche job of tech reporter on the West Coast. She was there at the beginning and broke many key stories on Silicon Valley as it developed, and in the process becoming a Silicon Valley icon herself.
So this book should have been a easy win for me. However, it turned out to be a vapid nothingburger. The book is made up of chapters where Swisher mostly bashes Internet founders as narcissistic white man children—something I can get behind—but her analysis is so shallow it basically exists at the level of name calling. The Google Founders are labelled the weird twins and criticised in a mild way for ripping off intellectual property. Mark Zuckerberg is apparently still a teenage arsehole that sweats a lot when he's nervous. Bezos is super ambitious and given a star for getting internet delivery sorted out—but is also an arsehole. Musk was apparently a great guy until he bought Twitter and ruined it for Swisher (what about all the shitty things he did before then with Tesla??). Steve Jobs was an arsehole, but a visionary and so he gets a pass. Nothing she says is interesting or deep or new here.
The other chapters are a sort of Wikipedia style summary of her life. She got a job here, she dated so and so, married someone else, had a child, started this business or that business. None of it is anywhere deep or personal enough to be of much interest. Most of this seems to be either to puff-up her self worth or aid in her slagging off of this or that boss from decades past. She also has this annoying habit of constantly talking about how "tough" she is, how "mean but fair" she is. Isn't that what any decent journalist is?
The only thing I'll take from the book is Sergey Brin's baby shower in 2008, where the rich and famous attendees were forced to choose between wearing nappies or onesies, and could drink expensive vodka dripping from an ice statue's nipple.
Normally I don't give one-stars, as I usually abandon these sorts of books before the end, but since I finished this one I'll rate it.
1-star.
February 29, 2024
A quick and fun read. That is, if you enjoy witty, scathing critiques of white men in hoodies.
February 29, 2024
I really wanted to like this. But there wasn't a lot of new info here, especially if you've followed Kara's work for a while. Most times I felt like it was collation of multiple opinion blog posts rather than a cohesive story.
March 4, 2024
The greatest technology reporter of the age adds to her legacy with a thoughtful, funny, and essential review of her years dissecting Silicon Valley lunacy for us. For fans of her work (including me, for sure), we get a greatest hits book with her additional acerbic content as she dresses down the powerful and calls out the insanity that reigns supreme among the Tech Bros. Somehow, she's tougher than any of them. More importantly, she enables the rest of us to better understand where tech is going and what it means because it affects our whole lives now more than ever before.
March 17, 2024
After the first few chapters I wanted to give this one 5 stars. Author is a smart, sharp writer and fellow Hoya (Georgetown grad) placed in the front row of the nascent internet world. Her prickly personality seems ideal for skewering both the old media overlords and the white bros of new tech money.
But about half way through I grew tired of her superior and sanctimonious tone. She seems to loathe every technology innovator except for Steve Jobs for whom she has an enduring crush on in spite of his many documented deficiencies about which she makes no mention.
In today’s world, and as always, there are people who make things happen and then those like this author who watch the genius unfold and then launch criticisms from the sidelines like an angry sports fan who claims to know the game better than the athletes. Ugh.
I get that she views herself as the “hey these emperors have no clothes” type, as most journalists do. But I’m much more a fan of those who are at least trying to make a better world, and not so much of the bystanders who smugly complain, ironically, via the technology hardware and social media platforms created by the targets of their vitriol.
IMHO she should have taken all the upstart investment opportunities she so proudly likes to remind us she repeatedly resisted, but she prefers to reside on the hill of self-believing moral and intellectual superiority. I guess I’m in no position to judge, though, since I’ve never been a journalist covering tech people and yet I’m now complaining about one via my keyboard.
But about half way through I grew tired of her superior and sanctimonious tone. She seems to loathe every technology innovator except for Steve Jobs for whom she has an enduring crush on in spite of his many documented deficiencies about which she makes no mention.
In today’s world, and as always, there are people who make things happen and then those like this author who watch the genius unfold and then launch criticisms from the sidelines like an angry sports fan who claims to know the game better than the athletes. Ugh.
I get that she views herself as the “hey these emperors have no clothes” type, as most journalists do. But I’m much more a fan of those who are at least trying to make a better world, and not so much of the bystanders who smugly complain, ironically, via the technology hardware and social media platforms created by the targets of their vitriol.
IMHO she should have taken all the upstart investment opportunities she so proudly likes to remind us she repeatedly resisted, but she prefers to reside on the hill of self-believing moral and intellectual superiority. I guess I’m in no position to judge, though, since I’ve never been a journalist covering tech people and yet I’m now complaining about one via my keyboard.
March 17, 2024
The author mocks famous tech founders calling them children while she herself behave childishly, just in another way.
The book is so sarcastic and pretends to be above things so much, that it drowns in a "he's such an asshole" swamp with them. It spends so much time on bullshiting that it forgets what it wants to be about and doesn't have time to go deeper.
It wanted to be a "fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead." But it is neither accounting nor fair.
It contains just a few stories that tell you, all around, how Kara is important because she texts with these "moguls". She doesn't forget to say "I knew it." or "I told him" everytime someone did something wrong.
There's nothing new in the book you wouldn't already know about famous tech founders. It doesn't bring different perspective on these powerfull and dangerous men either. It's just childish rant.
The book is so sarcastic and pretends to be above things so much, that it drowns in a "he's such an asshole" swamp with them. It spends so much time on bullshiting that it forgets what it wants to be about and doesn't have time to go deeper.
It wanted to be a "fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead." But it is neither accounting nor fair.
It contains just a few stories that tell you, all around, how Kara is important because she texts with these "moguls". She doesn't forget to say "I knew it." or "I told him" everytime someone did something wrong.
There's nothing new in the book you wouldn't already know about famous tech founders. It doesn't bring different perspective on these powerfull and dangerous men either. It's just childish rant.
March 6, 2024
I really enjoy Kara Swisher’s podcasts. This book is kind of a general history of modern tech with some personal anecdotes. The tone of the book feels strangely arrogant, like she knows better than all of these brilliant tech revolutionaries. Maybe should have been called Brag Book? ;)
March 29, 2024
"Needless to say, I had the last laugh"
April 4, 2024
Easiest five stars I've given. Many readers seem to think that the point of this razor-sharp, rich, hilarious tome is that it will offer new insight into the motivations of Silicon Valley tech CEOs, but to me, it's not really about the techies. It's about getting to see the world, for 300+ glorious pages, through the eyes of Swisher. Her insight always hits home and gives me real, substantive hope for the future.
As I navigate another "night sweats"-inducing term of Operation Electrical Engineering Degree—a pursuit that often fills me with despair and rage as I find myself, class after class, being one of the astonishingly few wamen in room—I have taken to carrying this book in my backpack as a talisman to ward off the darkness. It works. I was on a Zoom call yesterday and had this book propped up to serve as my "Support Swisher." As I prepared to unmute myself to speak (gross!) I looked into those burning aviators and felt the fear dissipate.
(Read this book. Listen to her podcasts.)
As I navigate another "night sweats"-inducing term of Operation Electrical Engineering Degree—a pursuit that often fills me with despair and rage as I find myself, class after class, being one of the astonishingly few wamen in room—I have taken to carrying this book in my backpack as a talisman to ward off the darkness. It works. I was on a Zoom call yesterday and had this book propped up to serve as my "Support Swisher." As I prepared to unmute myself to speak (gross!) I looked into those burning aviators and felt the fear dissipate.
(Read this book. Listen to her podcasts.)
March 14, 2024
I adore Kara Swisher and adored this book and am so happy I chose to listen to it via reading it in print - her very distinctive voice really brings it to life for anyone used to listening to her interviews and podcast. She’s absolutely no nonsense but somehow also hilarious as hell and gives ZERO FUCKS but is also deeply professional and empathetic.
Side note: I maintain that my dream presidential ticket is Swisher - Cuban ~ they’d fix it ALL.
Source: Audible credit
Side note: I maintain that my dream presidential ticket is Swisher - Cuban ~ they’d fix it ALL.
Source: Audible credit
March 7, 2024
3.5 stars. I like Kara Swisher. She is full of swagger and she’s a good storyteller. Reading about how she’s dominated (or at least countered) so many of the big men of tech is a delight, and I especially enjoyed her stories about working for John McLaughlin when she was beginning her career (how does one find such confidence at such a young age?!).
This is a memoir, but it’s also chronicle of how the internet went from being a playground full of idealistic promise to the hellscape it’s now become.
This is a memoir, but it’s also chronicle of how the internet went from being a playground full of idealistic promise to the hellscape it’s now become.
February 28, 2024
It’s fine. There’s pretty much nothing new in it. If you listen to pivot, or have even marginally followed Kara’s career, save your money.
April 20, 2024
With razor-sharp wit and decades experience reporting on tech, Swisher takes us behind the scenes to meet the digital revolution’s powerful insiders who continue to shape our world. Elon Musk believes Swisher’s no-holds-barred reportage makes her an a**. I think she’s brilliant.
March 30, 2024
3.5 roundup. Audiobook reads as a long podcast episode.
This book is about Kara S and the tech landscape is just a backdrop
This book is about Kara S and the tech landscape is just a backdrop
March 10, 2024
Meh.
The billionaire (mostly) boys of tech that Kara reports on seem to be a boring bunch of businessmen. They were educated enough to capitalize on a technology that had just became ripe for some to write or buy the programs that made them rich. And she was smart enough to make this tech her beat. Still, it's all pretty dull.
If you want to read a beautifully written book about real geniuses to see how truly great minds think, read The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut. THAT is a great read and worth your time.
The billionaire (mostly) boys of tech that Kara reports on seem to be a boring bunch of businessmen. They were educated enough to capitalize on a technology that had just became ripe for some to write or buy the programs that made them rich. And she was smart enough to make this tech her beat. Still, it's all pretty dull.
If you want to read a beautifully written book about real geniuses to see how truly great minds think, read The Maniac by Benjamin Labatut. THAT is a great read and worth your time.
April 19, 2024
After finishing Burn Book, which was admittedly very entertaining, I read the NYT review. It articulated better than I can what I found vexing and ultimately frustrating:
“There is a compelling tension here: Even as Swisher is rising into “Silicon Valley royalty,” as a 2014 New York magazine profile put it, Silicon Valley is, in her telling, descending into the gutter. This tension is scarcely acknowledged in those chapters that detail her relationship with various leading Tech figures. These seem instead designed to bolster her reputation as a fearless but fair-minded, straight-talking reporter…
Her forthrightness goes some way in helping us believe that “Burn Book” doesn’t merely represent a convenient pivot, as they say, from Tech royalty to Tech heretic at a time when strident industry criticism is trending hard. But “Burn Book”’s fatal flaw, the reason it can never fully dispel the whiff of opportunism that dooms any memoir, is that Swisher never shows in any convincing detail how her entanglement with Silicon Valley clouded her judgment. The story of her change of heart is thus undercut by the self-aggrandizing portrait that rests stubbornly at its core.”
“There is a compelling tension here: Even as Swisher is rising into “Silicon Valley royalty,” as a 2014 New York magazine profile put it, Silicon Valley is, in her telling, descending into the gutter. This tension is scarcely acknowledged in those chapters that detail her relationship with various leading Tech figures. These seem instead designed to bolster her reputation as a fearless but fair-minded, straight-talking reporter…
Her forthrightness goes some way in helping us believe that “Burn Book” doesn’t merely represent a convenient pivot, as they say, from Tech royalty to Tech heretic at a time when strident industry criticism is trending hard. But “Burn Book”’s fatal flaw, the reason it can never fully dispel the whiff of opportunism that dooms any memoir, is that Swisher never shows in any convincing detail how her entanglement with Silicon Valley clouded her judgment. The story of her change of heart is thus undercut by the self-aggrandizing portrait that rests stubbornly at its core.”
March 11, 2024
While Kara Swisher is an astute and storied tech reporter, this book left a lot to be desired. More a tell-all of leaders and less insight. For anyone who reads regularly, much of this is already well-known. It seems like someone who was paid to write a book not fully formed and forced their way through for the money. Journalists don’t often seem to make great book writers and the writing was more less more staid vignette than capturing. Some unique and interesting quotes and stories interspersed few and far between a lot of uninteresting celebrity stories and gossip. Still like the author and in awe of her achievements, just prefer her in other formats where she shines.
April 6, 2024
2.5 but rounding up. Listened to the audiobook read by the author. She is a very eloquent narrator.
I really tried to like this more. I just had no desire to keep picking it back up and had to force myself to finish before the library took it back. Kara is definitely a badass, doesn't care what anyone thinks, hard working journalist. I wanted to love her, but she is also incredibly full of herself. Over and over, she would talk about how she knew a new venture would fail or how she knew a business deal that happened was a bad idea. Only one time did she admit to being wrong about something. She even states she may come across as "rude" to people, but I don't even think it's that. She puts herself on a pedestal above all the tech executives except maybe Steve Jobs. She has only a tiny list of people she claims to like, which sometimes seemed like maybe even those people she didn't really like that much.
I will say there was one chapter that touched on women and how they are treated in the workplace that I found spot on. At one point, she says something along the lines of "top executive men in tech didn't care about the discomfort of women because they had never felt discomfort themselves." Beautifully said for more scenarios than just tech. She also believes that "the next generation is more aware." This is something I do hope she is right about because women deserve better in the workplace and in life.
I really tried to like this more. I just had no desire to keep picking it back up and had to force myself to finish before the library took it back. Kara is definitely a badass, doesn't care what anyone thinks, hard working journalist. I wanted to love her, but she is also incredibly full of herself. Over and over, she would talk about how she knew a new venture would fail or how she knew a business deal that happened was a bad idea. Only one time did she admit to being wrong about something. She even states she may come across as "rude" to people, but I don't even think it's that. She puts herself on a pedestal above all the tech executives except maybe Steve Jobs. She has only a tiny list of people she claims to like, which sometimes seemed like maybe even those people she didn't really like that much.
I will say there was one chapter that touched on women and how they are treated in the workplace that I found spot on. At one point, she says something along the lines of "top executive men in tech didn't care about the discomfort of women because they had never felt discomfort themselves." Beautifully said for more scenarios than just tech. She also believes that "the next generation is more aware." This is something I do hope she is right about because women deserve better in the workplace and in life.
March 25, 2024
Aštri, kandi, nevyniojanti į vatą, pilna įdomių jos, kaip super kietos tech žurnalistės, virtuvės detalių. Pvz., kas ir kaip jai leak’ina info. Viename podcaste yra sakiusi, kad už šią knygą ji gavo 2 mln $, tai šiek tiek jautėsi, kad tai jai buvo darbas, kurį ji turi padaryti, bet ne per daug nori. Nepaisant to, knyga vis tiek įdomi, įtraukianti, o pati Kara Swisher - na, negali ja nesižavėti.
April 2, 2024
A really fun roller coaster ride through the never dull tech industry whereby I learned a lot but also just really enjoyed the “madness”. Giving 3 instead of 4 stars as some rants to her political views (which I knew I disagreed with going into it) just didn’t add to the story and I felt should have been left out.
March 20, 2024
I wish it had been twice as long— loved.
April 7, 2024
Unapologetic and succinct. Her observations of the tech landscape and its major players both intrigued and repelled me. In many ways it mirrored my own feelings about a career based in tech.
But reassuring to see my own CEO on the list of good guys.
But reassuring to see my own CEO on the list of good guys.
Read
March 10, 2024No greater authority on the business of tech than Kara Swisher. Her Pivot podcast has been a can’t-miss for me since 2020, and this book helped me figure out why I love it. Kara isn’t always nice, but she lives by her values in a way few of us have the courage to do. Some of her “burns” feel risky, but they are never without reason. I appreciate someone with such a platform using it to say things not all of us feel we can. And I can’t argue her central thesis that the industry has always been — like all private industry — all about money in the end.
Some fun history lessons in here for those of us who weren’t paying as much attention in the 90s/early 00s! And the mental image of someone trying to get Kara Swisher to go down an absurd in-office slide is hilarious.
Some fun history lessons in here for those of us who weren’t paying as much attention in the 90s/early 00s! And the mental image of someone trying to get Kara Swisher to go down an absurd in-office slide is hilarious.
March 12, 2024
It was an interesting read because the author herself is an interesting figure, but I didn’t come away with any particularly new or groundbreaking insights into the tech industry.
March 12, 2024
You come for the juice but stay for the truth.
March 9, 2024
I listened to the audiobook, which is narrated by Kara Swisher. It was a bit of a subdued reading of her witty writing. Almost wonder if an AI trained voice had read it instead of Kara. One of her trademarks is her humor, so the flat delivery of it left me cold. The most enjoyable part of the book is the first half, which follows Kara from the dawn of tech scene and her rise from the Washington Post to the WSJ. And she shares some horrendous stories of working for John McLaughlin. The way she bumped heads with Murdoch and the old guard at the Journal was funny. I found the last half of the book a bit less interesting, perhaps because it covers more recent tech history and I do listen to her podcasts. If you’re a regular listener, you might also be bored, as you’ve already heard her opinions. My advice is to pass on buying the book and just loan it from the library.
March 28, 2024
I'm a believer in trying to keep up with the impossible task of following the latest in technology. I'm reminded of what my mentor told me in 1999 when I finished my Masters grad paper on long distance learning new at the time, "Remember, this and everything else dealing with technology is at best, a snapshot in time." What an understatement, more so from my 72 years of perspective.
On to my review. Kara Swisher remains someone, whether you agree with her assessments, is always worth listening to. This book attempts and mostly succeeds in a condensed look-back at the growth, not unlike kudzu, of the many tendrils of the widest definition of internet technologies. I admit that before reading I was even naively unaware of what a burn book is. Swisher writes like she talks in a staccato scattershot manner not unlike a verbal machine gun. She reviews/assesses both the products of the Internet (apps, websites, podcasts, etc.) as well as their creators... the good, bad and definitely the ugly. If Swisher doesn't approve of what someone is doing watch out. However, in her defense she doesn't just throw verbal hand grenades she backs up her opinions with well thought out logical and well defended opinions.
It would be pointless to go into too many details of the book as most are already in the quickly drifting past. And so, oddly for a book review, I would recommend that you watch her any chance you have on TV and listen to her myriad of podcasts. Those will give you what she's currently thinking and that has always been her strong suit ... what's in the moment. Her mind and imagination are amazing.
I only wish she could be appointed the Czar (Czarina?) of technology innovation and oversight for the government. As she points out repeatedly, something that has no regulation whatsoever. She warns of the harm that can (will) do as her last chapter fades out on AI.
On to my review. Kara Swisher remains someone, whether you agree with her assessments, is always worth listening to. This book attempts and mostly succeeds in a condensed look-back at the growth, not unlike kudzu, of the many tendrils of the widest definition of internet technologies. I admit that before reading I was even naively unaware of what a burn book is. Swisher writes like she talks in a staccato scattershot manner not unlike a verbal machine gun. She reviews/assesses both the products of the Internet (apps, websites, podcasts, etc.) as well as their creators... the good, bad and definitely the ugly. If Swisher doesn't approve of what someone is doing watch out. However, in her defense she doesn't just throw verbal hand grenades she backs up her opinions with well thought out logical and well defended opinions.
It would be pointless to go into too many details of the book as most are already in the quickly drifting past. And so, oddly for a book review, I would recommend that you watch her any chance you have on TV and listen to her myriad of podcasts. Those will give you what she's currently thinking and that has always been her strong suit ... what's in the moment. Her mind and imagination are amazing.
I only wish she could be appointed the Czar (Czarina?) of technology innovation and oversight for the government. As she points out repeatedly, something that has no regulation whatsoever. She warns of the harm that can (will) do as her last chapter fades out on AI.
March 16, 2024
I very much appreciate Swisher's voice, even though I don't agree with her all the time. She's very funny in an acerbic sort of way. Swisher is not for everybody, that's for sure. I was trying to think about what this book offers to the readers. For those who have a cursory view of the history of the tech from the 90's to today, this book offers a nice (if brief) overview of the most powerful players. The title of this book implies that there will be some salty commentary contained within it's pages. What it offers instead is pretty well known complaints, and nothing all that shocking. In fact, I think Swisher saves her most critical commentary for the old media King Rupert Murdoch (she worked for him in the past). Swisher has learned a lot covering these tech giants over the years, and her insight is valuable. But it's very clear she has favorites, and ones that she truly loathes. And those she favors may not be getting the fair critical evaluation that the book's title implies. I appreciate the last chapter looking forward into the AI heavy future, and her warning of the problems it could bring. Closing the book with quotes from Tristan Harris shows me where Swisher's allegiance actually lies, and that's with us, the users of these products.
April 13, 2024
I enjoyed this book similar to how I enjoyed the TV show, Silicon Valley since it’s about the tech industry that I love and am part of. I happen to be a tech optimist in general and believe that even though there are major issues, there is more good than bad and tech will ultimately help humanity evolve to something greater and better. Given this is my belief system, I have been turned off by Kara Swisher in the past couple of years and stopped listening and following her after seeing her vitriol towards tech and her approach of “gotcha/let me trigger you” journalism similar to Don Lemon. So I picked this book up with a mix of skepticism and curiosity.
I left with a much better understanding of her journey and why she believes what does. I agree with a lot of it and acknowledge that she plays a key role in keeping the equilibrium. She is an activist and you need activists to ensure that people or the system do not get complacent. So kudos to her. A hat tip to you Kara! I am going to pull up your podcast again.
March 21, 2024
I am really not the right person to write an objective review of this book. There’s so much name recognition here. It all takes me back to when I used to religiously listen to This Week in Tech every week along with some other shows on the twit network. I kind of gave up all that as the technology news kept getting darker and darker and I got more and more into listening to audiobooks instead. Still, those are good memories.
I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I also have to laugh when I read other reviewers complaining about how Swisher made this book all about herself. Maybe they need to look up the meaning of the word memoir.
Anyway, I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in Silicon Valley and all that it has wrought.
I can only say that I thoroughly enjoyed this one. I also have to laugh when I read other reviewers complaining about how Swisher made this book all about herself. Maybe they need to look up the meaning of the word memoir.
Anyway, I highly recommend this one for anyone interested in Silicon Valley and all that it has wrought.
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