you are watching the tv on c-span to hear in new york city at the annual publishers convention talking with authors who have books coming out and now we want to introduce you to anna i who has a book coming out in january of 2020 called uncanny valley. a memoir. >> guest: am currently writing full-time and i make integrating writer for the new yorker website covering silicon valley culture.

i got there probably through the most backroad possible. walk us through starting with college. >> it was just my ten year reunion in. i didn't attend. i graduated in 2009 from wesleyan university with a degree in sociology and i just read in "the wall street journal" 2009 was the worst job market for generations i had the good fortune to walk right into that. after a bunch of internships, working in music for a while i worked in book publishing an agency for a couple of years here in new york and after that i joined a startup network doing a sort of netflix for e-books type of app and i was there for three months, sort of like the person who knew about books and publishing. it was a four-person company

when i joined, three were founders. from there i went to san francisco and worked at a data analytics startup which i thought would be a great application of my sociology degree. little did i know it wasn't exactly what they were looking for. i did that for 18 months which were probably the team longest months of my life and from there i went to a company building software for open source software development. a software company building software for software developers. >> host: did you come back to new york? >> i still lived in san francisco. i did stay. i left the industry in 2018 and i had sort of been writing about it for a little while and then it sort of reached the point i could no longer do both so i left last february. >> host: one of the things you do is you describe your young

adulthood here in new york city. quote, i had a fragile life as an assistant at a small literary agency in manhattan and under my social anxiety primarily by avoiding them in a manner of so many twentysomethings living in north brooklyn at a time when an artist all chocolate factory was considered a local land park, people spoke earnestly earvin homesteading. my life was effectively analog. was it typical for people your age living in new york city? >> guest: that is a good question. i don't know. i think i can make a generalization about people my age but they're definitely my cohort people coming out of a liberal arts college -- >> host: wanting to be in publishing. disco in art, music, literature.

i lived where there was a pretty vibrant culture on the art scene and music scene. technology was sort of incidental. it wasn't the focus and i think that our world was much more like it was just a tangible physical world that wasn't one characterized by speed or disability of ethics and. >> host: you describe publishing as rather quaint and antiquated. >> guest: relatively, yes. they are really different. they take a really long time to make and often they require a lot of time to write. putting them together slowly is the best of the book often. silicon valley people are pushing software before it is really finished to see how it

goes. they are different approaches to product development. i'm horrified. for too making a boo it up as a product development that insofar as it is the sort of values that motivate both are different. >> host: is it addicting? >> technology?>> guest co. somef it, yes. >> host: is the mindset addicting? >> guest: yes. i found it really intoxicating. it feels good to see the product of your labor realized quickly and you kind o of get in this feedback loop working on something and you see it go quickly within a month of having a viable product. >> host: what about publishing and technology. is there a synergy there?

>> guest: that's a good question. in terms of talking technology provide new infrastructure for it's hard to say. i think a lot of the products available that try to innovate publishing printed separately taken off the way they are expected to. obviously e-greeting is a big development. i don't really know the answer to that question. it's hard to iterate on a pretty perfect technology. a book is a pretty perfect technology. ...

>> i was sitting there with one of the founders i guess they figured it would be a method to quantify skills that people were really trying to figure out how to use it so it seems like a useful tool for them. i think they saw somebody who could write a grammatically correct e-mail and i was on the technology side so that's a good question.

>> the only woman on the team with the software develop and internalize so break that down. >> i think talking about the everyday emotional experience medevac company of 20 or 40 and for me i was surrounded by mail confidence because that they were given the green light to do what they wanted to do and it was working. so for me it was to make sure

people were treated fairly and i was treated as an equal and try not to let myself to get gas lit but to make sure there was good reason rather than assuming it was gender specific. >> but very few women. >> famously so. >> our technologist treated differently quick. >> definitely. [laughter] but not just the engineering

success that is in short supply so those are the values but looking at the world or the infrastructure with that high level overview and part of that is technical but largely not in dealing with people's feelings and that can take a long time and then i was dealing with the users t7 did you find that what you are learning in silicon valley that would be within the norm for business quick. >> i think a lot of companies are interested to have that silicon valley startup.

i think the future of work that was silicon valley and we don't mean that in a union way but but how to keep up with the pace of technology so how does that become a model? i don't think it is all bad. it is specific t7 worded the phrase come from quick.

>> it describes the experience of a humanoid robot to fall into a valley like fiction it is human but not quite it is surreal but something is off. >> is at how you felt when you are out there quick. >> yes. it was an emotional experience in certain ways for sure. >> $69000 for your first job in silicon valley with benefits. >> in 2013 it was i had my whole department that was one third of my paycheck i did not have student debt or any loans

so i definitely could survive but anybody now have to find an apartment might have a tougher time than i did. >> but it didn't take long to understand that fetish. >> i think around the time i was writing people were excited about big data and technology and then to know what is going on and with that first analysis and how they go with these technologies and

also and i had not realized about collecting data and that is preferable to be in that position of someone who has information from the unknown t7 what can be done with all that information? [laughter] >> what can to be? t7 is at all about marketing quick. >> the internet economy in any individual app there is a way to make money unless they are selling data to someone else

as the advertiser. the e-commerce site may it easier to check it out or just to check out like amazon makes it incredibly easy they could fix that. so that would be pretty kosher of that user data but it does get more frightening when you talk about selling the data not only to advertisers but to have government surveillance that targets that is

culturally based or targeting towards minorities or religious groups. it is a unexperienced t7 you are from new york city were you shocked to go to the other coast quick. >> yes. in many ways to have a very big presence in san francisco still but more casual not know if i could always speak to san francisco because when i move there i was in the office t7

you were down for the cause. >> that means to refer to being committed to the company. stay up until midnight working on a project that is not within your job responsibility but that's down for the cause. but to make sure the team was the priority t7 the book is coming out january 2020 that's a long lead time. >> i guess so. i didn't make that decision. >> one of the things that you write i have never seen a

shameful juxtaposition of blatant suffering and affluence. >> yes i think anyone who has been to san francisco in the last decade has seen this. there was a growing homeless population growing 17 percent in the last two years i find it very jarring and i still do. i hope it never stops to be but you walk down to go to the neighborhood market and they are outside on the street you will see people outside of city hall. and to be in the city where people are really being failed at the basic level so for me

there are ways to solve these problems that are not being solved but these are very basic fundamental problems and i find it upsetting that people haven't turned their attention t7 so with tech today, and that is a lot different do you get asked that quick. >> i write more successful aspects of the industry. it's less of an issue for me but yes i think they are excited to talk about what they are working on it is a

pretty secretive industry with google or facebook or amazon even those that have been part of the dedicated piece but it's funny. i do feel going from being a tech worker to writing this history t7 with that 18 months? is that the log is part of your life quick. >> the most intense t7 the website that we all know do you use that i am

significantly more paranoid about the companies or the apps that i use if they don't have a revenue model i am more suspicious of it i'm not likely to use it. but asked about my phone number or address i turn off the setting i use those ad blockers that use tracking. i do love it in many ways but i do feel i am more aware of the nefarious use of what could happen for a guy feel very protective of my content.

but i'm proud if you google me i have no pictures of my face i've been able to get away with that for 20 years. of always been a little bit paranoid i guess t7 book tv c-span two. c-span2.

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