This is a compelling narrative only if you ignore every available fact
April 3, 2024 12:06 AM Subscribe
The long and short of it is that Swisher is not a good journalist—or, framed more generously, that she thrived in an industry with remarkably low standards for which we are still paying the price. from The Miseducation of Kara Swisher, a review of Burn Book by Edward Ongweso Jr. [The Baffler; ungated]
Some less incisive reviews:
Kara Swisher once again punctures the puffed-up egos of Silicon Valley [Washington Post; ungated]
Kara Swisher Is Sick of Tech People, So She Wrote a Book About Them [Wired; ungated]
Burn Book — a love-hate report from the tech front line [Financial Times; ungated]
Also:
The quotable Kara Swisher: Insights and zingers from the ‘Burn Book’ event at Town Hall Seattle [Geekwire]
An excerpt: Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media My front-row seat to a slow-moving catastrophe. [NY Magazine; ungated]
Searching for "Swisher" on MetaFilter brings up many hits
Some less incisive reviews:
Kara Swisher once again punctures the puffed-up egos of Silicon Valley [Washington Post; ungated]
Kara Swisher Is Sick of Tech People, So She Wrote a Book About Them [Wired; ungated]
Burn Book — a love-hate report from the tech front line [Financial Times; ungated]
Also:
The quotable Kara Swisher: Insights and zingers from the ‘Burn Book’ event at Town Hall Seattle [Geekwire]
An excerpt: Over Three Decades, Tech Obliterated Media My front-row seat to a slow-moving catastrophe. [NY Magazine; ungated]
Searching for "Swisher" on MetaFilter brings up many hits
I've described the tech press as a group of journalistic Pomeranians, and I continue to stand by that assessment. Even by the low standards of the enthusiast press, the tech press has been laughingly uncritical of the field, more often being cheerleaders than actual journalists. This leads to the tech industry being surprised when they deal with real journalists who do actually look into the field, and why so many attack journalists for doing actual journalism.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:40 AM on April 3 [18 favorites]
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:40 AM on April 3 [18 favorites]
This is a compelling narrative only if you ignore every available fact.
The narrative in question here is that the predominantly white and male leaders of tech companies were unconcerned with the safety of what they were building because they generally never had fear about their own safety. I’m not sure this is completely true, but there are plenty of facts that support this as a possibility.
Was Kara too much of a tech booster in the past? Is she still not enough of a critic now? Is she selectively rewriting her history to position herself as more of a critic than she was? Perhaps, but I also think her work is a lot better than this piece.
posted by snofoam at 3:00 AM on April 3 [10 favorites]
The narrative in question here is that the predominantly white and male leaders of tech companies were unconcerned with the safety of what they were building because they generally never had fear about their own safety. I’m not sure this is completely true, but there are plenty of facts that support this as a possibility.
Was Kara too much of a tech booster in the past? Is she still not enough of a critic now? Is she selectively rewriting her history to position herself as more of a critic than she was? Perhaps, but I also think her work is a lot better than this piece.
posted by snofoam at 3:00 AM on April 3 [10 favorites]
Ongweso's criticism is that the problem is much bigger than that: even if those companies had non-male, non-white leaders, the business models of these wealth-making enterprises inherently predicted their abuses. He gives various examples of giant companies with non-male, non-white leaders "operating exactly as we might expect". Ongweso doesn't explicitly spell out what he thinks the real source of these companies' psychopathic and/or antisocial behavior is; I'd say it's that money and power can corrupt anyone, that wealth-based solidarity can trump any other kind of solidarity, and that even someone who has experienced fear for their own safety can take away as a lesson not the idea that everyone should be protected from harm, but that they should do whatever they can to protect themselves even if that means trampling over everyone else (and often, those being trampled deserve it, because they haven't shown the initiative or whatever that the business leader in question has). Diversity is critical for a lot of reasons, but it's not a solution to selfishness.
Either way, I haven't read Swisher's book, so I don't know if Ongweso's description of Swisher's narrative is accurate.
posted by trig at 4:36 AM on April 3 [22 favorites]
Either way, I haven't read Swisher's book, so I don't know if Ongweso's description of Swisher's narrative is accurate.
posted by trig at 4:36 AM on April 3 [22 favorites]
The essay mentioned in the FPP, Words Matter: How Tech Media Helped Write Gig Companies into Existence [PDF], is an excellent piece.
The not-too-subtle subtext of these kinds of opinion pieces is that this “technology” (which again is just a mobile app and a company with venture capital to pursue regulatory arbitrage) can save us from the ills of modern-day capitalism – things such as feelings of alienation, growing income inequality, and evaporating sense of purpose.
posted by chavenet at 4:37 AM on April 3 [6 favorites]
The not-too-subtle subtext of these kinds of opinion pieces is that this “technology” (which again is just a mobile app and a company with venture capital to pursue regulatory arbitrage) can save us from the ills of modern-day capitalism – things such as feelings of alienation, growing income inequality, and evaporating sense of purpose.
posted by chavenet at 4:37 AM on April 3 [6 favorites]
I also think her work is a lot better than this piece
Better in what way? I'm not asking this to be snarky. I've long felt there was something that I just didn't get about Swisher and the things I've read--inevitably by other journalists--haven't really illuminated me, so I'd be curious to hear from someone who's not in the industry.
From my perspective, she's done real harm to my community. She pushed the myth of Elon Musk as a smart guy long after it became clear to the casual bystander (me) that he wasn't. Now he's the biggest single employer in my area and his casual approach to workplace safety means that the largest employer has deaths on site, as well as a generally hostile work environment, and our natural environment is suffering. I have to conserve water daily and go entirely without running water a few days every year (days if we're lucky) and yet Tesla gets free reign over our sensitive water table. That's just the direct affects of having Tesla around; there's also the effect of having Musk, Joe Lonsdale, and others spouting great replacement theory and donating to similarly-minded local politicians.
She has taken a turn for the better--she called out Isaacson for not addressing the racial harassment within Tesla, for instance. I can't really find proof that she addressed that same harassment previously, though. Maybe she's just mad at Isaacson for being on her turf.
Anyway, here's an example of what actual investigative journalism looks like. Reporter Gus Bova spent months speaking with gigafactory workers.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:39 AM on April 3 [32 favorites]
Better in what way? I'm not asking this to be snarky. I've long felt there was something that I just didn't get about Swisher and the things I've read--inevitably by other journalists--haven't really illuminated me, so I'd be curious to hear from someone who's not in the industry.
From my perspective, she's done real harm to my community. She pushed the myth of Elon Musk as a smart guy long after it became clear to the casual bystander (me) that he wasn't. Now he's the biggest single employer in my area and his casual approach to workplace safety means that the largest employer has deaths on site, as well as a generally hostile work environment, and our natural environment is suffering. I have to conserve water daily and go entirely without running water a few days every year (days if we're lucky) and yet Tesla gets free reign over our sensitive water table. That's just the direct affects of having Tesla around; there's also the effect of having Musk, Joe Lonsdale, and others spouting great replacement theory and donating to similarly-minded local politicians.
She has taken a turn for the better--she called out Isaacson for not addressing the racial harassment within Tesla, for instance. I can't really find proof that she addressed that same harassment previously, though. Maybe she's just mad at Isaacson for being on her turf.
Anyway, here's an example of what actual investigative journalism looks like. Reporter Gus Bova spent months speaking with gigafactory workers.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:39 AM on April 3 [32 favorites]
Ongweso doesn't explicitly spell out what he thinks the real source of these companies' psychopathic and/or antisocial behavior is; I'd say it's that money and power can corrupt anyone
I noticed his lack of specificity too, and I feel like I see it regularly among leftist journalists recently. My theory is that people get tired of, or realize the audience is not receptive to, pointing out that it was all explained pretty well in 1867 that capitalism requires even well-meaning* capitalists to do shitty things to stay competitive in the marketplace, and even then capitalism is destined to face crises that harm everyone in arm's reach.
* I do not think the guy who "founded" Uber was well-meaning.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:45 AM on April 3 [9 favorites]
I noticed his lack of specificity too, and I feel like I see it regularly among leftist journalists recently. My theory is that people get tired of, or realize the audience is not receptive to, pointing out that it was all explained pretty well in 1867 that capitalism requires even well-meaning* capitalists to do shitty things to stay competitive in the marketplace, and even then capitalism is destined to face crises that harm everyone in arm's reach.
* I do not think the guy who "founded" Uber was well-meaning.
posted by tofu_crouton at 4:45 AM on April 3 [9 favorites]
(I'd go farther than that; capitalism isn't the only system characterized by tons and tons of abuse in search of power.)
posted by trig at 4:53 AM on April 3 [6 favorites]
posted by trig at 4:53 AM on April 3 [6 favorites]
Regardless of the book or anything else, this interview of Swisher by Sam Altman is pretty hilarious. AFAICT, she was doing the promo your for the book, and called up Altman to interview her in the SF City Arts and Lectures series...
This is pretty obvious indication of being a bit too buddy buddy with the big players in her subject area. But the interview is a rollicking ride.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:22 AM on April 3 [3 favorites]
This is pretty obvious indication of being a bit too buddy buddy with the big players in her subject area. But the interview is a rollicking ride.
posted by kaibutsu at 5:22 AM on April 3 [3 favorites]
This passage identifies a problem but it's not the one the reviewer thinks it is:
You're not. You're a mark and you're being played. A con man takes a sucker's money. Big Important People take a journalist's impartiality and turn them into their PR rep.
What's really sad is that if I know this, so does Swisher, and she bought in anyway.
posted by martin q blank at 6:28 AM on April 3 [39 favorites]
Other potential ethical lapses abound: Swisher advises Rupert Murdoch not to invest in Vice Media, Mark Zuckerberg calls her late one night for her feedback on an essay he is writing, Page asks Swisher for help writing an essay extolling the virtues of Google—including its long-ignored “Don’t Be Evil” commandment—and Elon Musk asks Swisher for her thoughts on what to do with Twitter shortly after acquiring it.OK, yes, it's an ethical violation, because an impartial journalist does not provide off-the-books help to those they cover. But it's more than that. It's like a long con that puts Swisher in their pockets. I've seen it over and over in my journalism career, and in my early days as a reporter, I admit that I fell for it a couple of times. These Big Important People come to you and ask for your advice and make you feel Big and Important, like you're one of them.
You're not. You're a mark and you're being played. A con man takes a sucker's money. Big Important People take a journalist's impartiality and turn them into their PR rep.
What's really sad is that if I know this, so does Swisher, and she bought in anyway.
posted by martin q blank at 6:28 AM on April 3 [39 favorites]
This is the hottest of takes, but I have always seen Swisher as more of a scenester than a journalist, and I can tell you exactly why: Boing Boing. Even to the extent some of their contributors have entertained or provoked me over the years, and even to the extent I respect some of them (particularly Doctorow) within certain limits, it’s a huge scene clique. There is a deep archetypal connection in my brain between the sort of person with a solid history of bylines on Boing Boing and the sort of person who really needed to be seen at DNA Lounge in the early aughts. Within this clique, fin de siècle techno-utopianism never really died. Even at their most critical, the mounting lapses of the tech industry were reliably considered bad apples failing to fulfill the potential of a “New Economy” now a quarter century old.
I don’t think Swisher is a bad person, or even a bad journalist. In fact, I think she’s probably a little too idealistic for her own good, and this helps blind her to the realities of the machine she’s been a moving cog in for decades. The most damning evidence is that it took until 2016 for the penny to drop. I remember that meeting with the nascent Trump administration. I remember the little tempest it created in certain corners of the Internet. I remember being a little perplexed at what the big deal was. This is not a defense. Of course they took that meeting. I don’t know what Swisher (as the exemplar at hand) thought had been going on that would have led her to think otherwise. The interest of capital is to make a show of bending the knee to the new regime, even if it’s led by an asshole.
We are all familiar with the idea of “regulatory capture,” but I had to google to confirm how little we talk about the parallel idea of “journalistic capture.” According to a quick review of results, the term of art is “media capture,” and it’s more often associated with government subversion of free press, even though capital has a strong interest in capturing both. Swisher is far from the only example I can conjure of a self-styled critic who was captured by the subject of their criticism, but since one of the biggest examples I can think of is a personal acquaintance, I am going to leave that as an exercise for the reader.
By and large Swisher has been intentionally insulated from the true nature of the beast she has been covering. I don’t want to accidentally suggest that she has succeeded despite a lack of professional ability (as Ongweso does), but rather that her subjects have also been invested in her success, and have consistently led her down the garden path. Her baseline assumptions about the way the industry was fated to “change the world” discouraged certain uncomfortable questions about things like how Uber planned to ever make money, what the long-term consequences for society were if they never did, and whether Uber’s stakeholders cared. It was to the industry’s benefit to make sure those baseline assumptions were never challenged.
Because the industry had a strong motivation to keep Swisher bullish, they cultivated her social experience accordingly. She was an insider. She had whuffie. Again, I’m not suggesting she is a bad person or was knowingly corrupt. I’m suggesting we are all prone to going easier on whoever invited us to that really cool party, and for a while Swisher was invited to all the coolest parties. This is why she saw the floor drop out from under her in 2016 while a tech-nobody like me (and many of you, I assume) initially shared her optimism that innovation could remake capitalism for the better, only to watch in realtime the creeping horror show by which the exact inverse actually happened, as I suspect it always does.
In this light, I think Ongweso’s review appears to harshly judge Swisher’s character at the expense of a much broader picture in which she figures with a certain prominence. I hadn’t planned to read her book, but whatever this review’s other shortcomings, Ongweso might have done his job. I am now tempted to read it for the same reason I initially had intended not to: For all the reasons previously stated, I consider Swisher an unreliable narrator of the events and people she writes about. But she has nevertheless had access we commoners have not. I am starting to think that perhaps her unreliability makes for an interesting source of contrast for casting the whole mess into relief.
posted by gelfin at 6:36 AM on April 3 [49 favorites]
I don’t think Swisher is a bad person, or even a bad journalist. In fact, I think she’s probably a little too idealistic for her own good, and this helps blind her to the realities of the machine she’s been a moving cog in for decades. The most damning evidence is that it took until 2016 for the penny to drop. I remember that meeting with the nascent Trump administration. I remember the little tempest it created in certain corners of the Internet. I remember being a little perplexed at what the big deal was. This is not a defense. Of course they took that meeting. I don’t know what Swisher (as the exemplar at hand) thought had been going on that would have led her to think otherwise. The interest of capital is to make a show of bending the knee to the new regime, even if it’s led by an asshole.
We are all familiar with the idea of “regulatory capture,” but I had to google to confirm how little we talk about the parallel idea of “journalistic capture.” According to a quick review of results, the term of art is “media capture,” and it’s more often associated with government subversion of free press, even though capital has a strong interest in capturing both. Swisher is far from the only example I can conjure of a self-styled critic who was captured by the subject of their criticism, but since one of the biggest examples I can think of is a personal acquaintance, I am going to leave that as an exercise for the reader.
By and large Swisher has been intentionally insulated from the true nature of the beast she has been covering. I don’t want to accidentally suggest that she has succeeded despite a lack of professional ability (as Ongweso does), but rather that her subjects have also been invested in her success, and have consistently led her down the garden path. Her baseline assumptions about the way the industry was fated to “change the world” discouraged certain uncomfortable questions about things like how Uber planned to ever make money, what the long-term consequences for society were if they never did, and whether Uber’s stakeholders cared. It was to the industry’s benefit to make sure those baseline assumptions were never challenged.
Because the industry had a strong motivation to keep Swisher bullish, they cultivated her social experience accordingly. She was an insider. She had whuffie. Again, I’m not suggesting she is a bad person or was knowingly corrupt. I’m suggesting we are all prone to going easier on whoever invited us to that really cool party, and for a while Swisher was invited to all the coolest parties. This is why she saw the floor drop out from under her in 2016 while a tech-nobody like me (and many of you, I assume) initially shared her optimism that innovation could remake capitalism for the better, only to watch in realtime the creeping horror show by which the exact inverse actually happened, as I suspect it always does.
In this light, I think Ongweso’s review appears to harshly judge Swisher’s character at the expense of a much broader picture in which she figures with a certain prominence. I hadn’t planned to read her book, but whatever this review’s other shortcomings, Ongweso might have done his job. I am now tempted to read it for the same reason I initially had intended not to: For all the reasons previously stated, I consider Swisher an unreliable narrator of the events and people she writes about. But she has nevertheless had access we commoners have not. I am starting to think that perhaps her unreliability makes for an interesting source of contrast for casting the whole mess into relief.
posted by gelfin at 6:36 AM on April 3 [49 favorites]
Metafilter: a solid history of bylines on Boing Boing and the need to have been seen at DNA Lounge in the early aughts.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:43 AM on April 3 [16 favorites]
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:43 AM on April 3 [16 favorites]
I started reading TFA previously, having seen it linked someplace else, and burned out before I got very far. I just can't care enough about this Swisher person to read that.
The thread does resonate with something I found myself thinking this morning, about the impoverishment of hard news reporting in print. The big national newspapers in particular feel like hollowed-out models of their former selves these days. I suppose the NYT's non-political reporting is still pretty good, but once upon a time they had people on salary practically everywhere in the world where noteworthy things might happen, and that's long gone.
And I suppose I should have just said "impoverishment of hard news reporting" because "in print" was the only real hard news reporting there ever was.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:48 AM on April 3 [6 favorites]
The thread does resonate with something I found myself thinking this morning, about the impoverishment of hard news reporting in print. The big national newspapers in particular feel like hollowed-out models of their former selves these days. I suppose the NYT's non-political reporting is still pretty good, but once upon a time they had people on salary practically everywhere in the world where noteworthy things might happen, and that's long gone.
And I suppose I should have just said "impoverishment of hard news reporting" because "in print" was the only real hard news reporting there ever was.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 7:48 AM on April 3 [6 favorites]
Ugh, Swisher gave a talk at an industry event that I attended and I was so disappointed in her (I guess if I had followed all this more closely she would have simply met my expectations). There was no "talk" - there was no information or advice or insight - it was incessant name-dropping and relaying of comments she made to so-and-so (oooh ahh) while they were looking such-and-such prototype (ahhh oooh) - there was nothing being shared except how great she was, because of her access.
posted by stevil at 8:00 AM on April 3 [5 favorites]
posted by stevil at 8:00 AM on April 3 [5 favorites]
While I agree that a lot of mainstream and businessy tech "reporters" and substantial portions of the actual tech press are captured stooges... I do see hope and good work out there.
If you haven't been reading ProPublica, The Markup, 404 Media, or the relatively new Proof News, give them a look and consider supporting them. ProPublica in particular seems to achieve real-world gains with some frequency, though it's not tech-specific.
posted by humbug at 8:00 AM on April 3 [25 favorites]
If you haven't been reading ProPublica, The Markup, 404 Media, or the relatively new Proof News, give them a look and consider supporting them. ProPublica in particular seems to achieve real-world gains with some frequency, though it's not tech-specific.
posted by humbug at 8:00 AM on April 3 [25 favorites]
I recently read Abolish Silicon Valley: How to Liberate Technology from Capitalism, a memoir and critique by Wendy Liu that does a great job of charting an emotional arc that begins with "yes, this is special and I am special for being in this industry."
Back in 2013 (? or thereabouts), I was in San Francisco at an academic conference session focused on smart cities. After a delightful set of presentations puncturing the overinflated rhetoric and images, a tech journalist (who self-introduced as such) asked (paraphrase) "why are you all so negative about smart cities? what about the good parts?"
Face-palm.
In retrospect, perhaps they thought they were being journalistic by asking these (in their mind) unreasonably critical scholars this question, instead of being journalistic by asking themselves why that was their immediate instinctual response.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:25 AM on April 3 [8 favorites]
Back in 2013 (? or thereabouts), I was in San Francisco at an academic conference session focused on smart cities. After a delightful set of presentations puncturing the overinflated rhetoric and images, a tech journalist (who self-introduced as such) asked (paraphrase) "why are you all so negative about smart cities? what about the good parts?"
Face-palm.
In retrospect, perhaps they thought they were being journalistic by asking these (in their mind) unreasonably critical scholars this question, instead of being journalistic by asking themselves why that was their immediate instinctual response.
posted by spamandkimchi at 8:25 AM on April 3 [8 favorites]
This is a compelling narrative only if you ignore every available fact.
This is a great burn, and (having not read Swisher's book) I can imagine that it may be warranted in the larger context, but just in the context of the pull-quote to which it is responding, it feels really off-base. Swisher (in that pull-quote) is saying that the white-dude bro-ocracy of the tech industry had been so insulated from consequences in their lives that they were naturally - inevitably, even - ignorant of the consequences that would come to others as a result of their tech. Ongweso focuses hard on the "white" part of the statement while arguing that there are non-white people in these companies, and that these consequences were inevitable from the business models in any case, no matter who's in charge.
But, like, that's what Swisher is saying, by my read. To put it in other words: "These dudes were so privileged in their consequence-free upbringings that they built tech business models that didn't take into account their inevitable consequences for others."
I get that Swisher is a "bad" journalist for many reasons, and I have very, very little patience for non-apology mea culpas that basically amount to a personal narrative of "I was right before and I'm still right now that I'm disillusioned, it's just the world that has changed." And, again, maybe the broader context for the pull-quote shows that she's really saying what Ongweso claims she is, but this particular bit just feels like an unfair shot.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:30 AM on April 3 [5 favorites]
This is a great burn, and (having not read Swisher's book) I can imagine that it may be warranted in the larger context, but just in the context of the pull-quote to which it is responding, it feels really off-base. Swisher (in that pull-quote) is saying that the white-dude bro-ocracy of the tech industry had been so insulated from consequences in their lives that they were naturally - inevitably, even - ignorant of the consequences that would come to others as a result of their tech. Ongweso focuses hard on the "white" part of the statement while arguing that there are non-white people in these companies, and that these consequences were inevitable from the business models in any case, no matter who's in charge.
But, like, that's what Swisher is saying, by my read. To put it in other words: "These dudes were so privileged in their consequence-free upbringings that they built tech business models that didn't take into account their inevitable consequences for others."
I get that Swisher is a "bad" journalist for many reasons, and I have very, very little patience for non-apology mea culpas that basically amount to a personal narrative of "I was right before and I'm still right now that I'm disillusioned, it's just the world that has changed." And, again, maybe the broader context for the pull-quote shows that she's really saying what Ongweso claims she is, but this particular bit just feels like an unfair shot.
posted by Navelgazer at 8:30 AM on April 3 [5 favorites]
If you want the opposite of Kara Swisher - if you want a well-written book which really digs deep into how Silicon Valley has always been this way, going all the way back to when White colonizers stole the land and ethnically cleansed the Ohlone tribe - I strongly recommend Palo Alto.
Like Kara Swisher, and like so many other people, I had this view that Silicon Valley is messed up now, but surely it was utopian and lovely in previous decades, e.g. the 1960s/70s. Turns out that wasn't the case, that's just a convenient puff trope. Palo Alto details how it has always been ruthless White robber barons at the helm, including during the glory 1970s I had imagined, and the pretension of liberalism was meant to be a harmless veneer that was never to interfere with the prime objective - the making of money.
Meanwhile, the folks who pushed back - the Ohlone people, the Ghadar Party, the Black Panther party, etc - have largely gotten written out of the history of the region, or at least downplayed from most discussion. Another reason it's important to read this book.
I am, have always been, and always will be, a lover of science and technology. But it is very important to be clear-eyed and not get deluded, not even by the seduction of friendly rich people who claim to be "making the world a better place" and invite you to join their noble (and fun!) mission.
Take the job if you must, but don't drink the Kool-Aid.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:49 AM on April 3 [21 favorites]
Like Kara Swisher, and like so many other people, I had this view that Silicon Valley is messed up now, but surely it was utopian and lovely in previous decades, e.g. the 1960s/70s. Turns out that wasn't the case, that's just a convenient puff trope. Palo Alto details how it has always been ruthless White robber barons at the helm, including during the glory 1970s I had imagined, and the pretension of liberalism was meant to be a harmless veneer that was never to interfere with the prime objective - the making of money.
Meanwhile, the folks who pushed back - the Ohlone people, the Ghadar Party, the Black Panther party, etc - have largely gotten written out of the history of the region, or at least downplayed from most discussion. Another reason it's important to read this book.
I am, have always been, and always will be, a lover of science and technology. But it is very important to be clear-eyed and not get deluded, not even by the seduction of friendly rich people who claim to be "making the world a better place" and invite you to join their noble (and fun!) mission.
Take the job if you must, but don't drink the Kool-Aid.
posted by splitpeasoup at 9:49 AM on April 3 [21 favorites]
Better in what way? I'm not asking this to be snarky. I've long felt there was something that I just didn't get about Swisher and the things I've read--inevitably by other journalists--haven't really illuminated me, so I'd be curious to hear from someone who's not in the industry.
I’ve been listening to her podcast for a few years and I enjoy it. She can be a little too self-congratulatory, but she has a variety of guests and she pushes back when they get too bullshitty. I guess I think of her as an interviewer more than a journalist, and I think she’s good at it. I guess I didn’t follow her back when she was the Maggie Haberman of tech access journalism. Today she is pretty critical of many who deserve criticism. The book tour episodes of her podcast the last couple weeks have been definitely below par, but otherwise, I find it consistently rewarding.
posted by snofoam at 10:07 AM on April 3 [4 favorites]
I’ve been listening to her podcast for a few years and I enjoy it. She can be a little too self-congratulatory, but she has a variety of guests and she pushes back when they get too bullshitty. I guess I think of her as an interviewer more than a journalist, and I think she’s good at it. I guess I didn’t follow her back when she was the Maggie Haberman of tech access journalism. Today she is pretty critical of many who deserve criticism. The book tour episodes of her podcast the last couple weeks have been definitely below par, but otherwise, I find it consistently rewarding.
posted by snofoam at 10:07 AM on April 3 [4 favorites]
(Also, there hasn’t been an episode of her podcast in a year or two when she hasn’t talked shit about Elon Musk, though she still acknowledges that she liked that he was working on interesting/important stuff like electric vehicles and rackets rather than disrupting valet parking or whatever pointless stuff many startups were doing when the VC cash was flowing.)
posted by snofoam at 10:12 AM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by snofoam at 10:12 AM on April 3 [1 favorite]
incessant name-dropping and relaying of comments she made to so-and-so
I don't have enough experience with her to have a string opinion, but I read an except of the book when it came out, and at least for the except selected, that was a big part of it.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:37 AM on April 3 [4 favorites]
I don't have enough experience with her to have a string opinion, but I read an except of the book when it came out, and at least for the except selected, that was a big part of it.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 11:37 AM on April 3 [4 favorites]
She mixes and serves the Kool-Aid to all who want it.
posted by mattgriffin at 11:45 AM on April 3 [4 favorites]
posted by mattgriffin at 11:45 AM on April 3 [4 favorites]
I enjoyed the book, though not as 'true' journalism or with a blind eye to the unreliable narrator aspect. But she is self-aware of the "too much of an insider" thing and concludes with somewhat of a promise to do something different. I only have the audiobook so I can't track down exactly what. Anyway, I don't think it's devoid of any value, not is it an exemplary act of journalism.
posted by lookoutbelow at 3:57 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by lookoutbelow at 3:57 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
electric vehicles and rackets
Just noticed my own glorious typo. Was supposed to be rockets. (Can’t have been a simple o/a switch, so it must have been some more complicated typo plus autocorrect.)
posted by snofoam at 6:40 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
Just noticed my own glorious typo. Was supposed to be rockets. (Can’t have been a simple o/a switch, so it must have been some more complicated typo plus autocorrect.)
posted by snofoam at 6:40 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
I didn't think that this was an especially insightful or incisive takedown. Kara is pretty open about her viewpoint and her biases. I wouldn't find an article critiquing anna wintour for being beholden to the fashion industry especially compelling; this one had a similar vibe.
posted by sid at 8:45 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
posted by sid at 8:45 PM on April 3 [1 favorite]
> But the interview is a rollicking ride.
What's Going On With Kara Swisher's Book Tour? [ungated] - "The veteran tech journalist is promoting her memoir with tech bros like Sam Altman."
> I strongly recommend Palo Alto.
previously :P
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM on April 3 [3 favorites]
What's Going On With Kara Swisher's Book Tour? [ungated] - "The veteran tech journalist is promoting her memoir with tech bros like Sam Altman."
> I strongly recommend Palo Alto.
previously :P
posted by kliuless at 11:56 PM on April 3 [3 favorites]
But, like, that's what Swisher is saying, by my read. To put it in other words: "These dudes were so privileged in their consequence-free upbringings that they built tech business models that didn't take into account their inevitable consequences for others."
The problem is that she doesn't add the proper followup: "...and they were enabled in doing so by people like myself, who helped dismiss the impacts of their conduct." She's trying to create a context that the problem is that the technoutopian mindset was corrupted, and it's that context that Ongweso is pushing back on, making the point that these flaws have always been baked into the technoutopian "ideal". (This is also why I'm put off by Doctrow's "enshittification" narrative, as he seems happy to point the finger at everyone but himself - which became rather evident when he brought up how Wix has become a hotbed of various fraud, while pointedly avoiding that a large part of why that happened is because people like himself spent over two decades arguing that Wix should not be made to care about the fraud happening on their platform.)
Kara is pretty open about her viewpoint and her biases.
Ongweso's issue isn't about those, but her inablility to be properly self-reflective about how she was - and given that she's bringing Sam Altman on her book tour, continues to be - involved in the systems that caused these problems.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:07 AM on April 4 [8 favorites]
The problem is that she doesn't add the proper followup: "...and they were enabled in doing so by people like myself, who helped dismiss the impacts of their conduct." She's trying to create a context that the problem is that the technoutopian mindset was corrupted, and it's that context that Ongweso is pushing back on, making the point that these flaws have always been baked into the technoutopian "ideal". (This is also why I'm put off by Doctrow's "enshittification" narrative, as he seems happy to point the finger at everyone but himself - which became rather evident when he brought up how Wix has become a hotbed of various fraud, while pointedly avoiding that a large part of why that happened is because people like himself spent over two decades arguing that Wix should not be made to care about the fraud happening on their platform.)
Kara is pretty open about her viewpoint and her biases.
Ongweso's issue isn't about those, but her inablility to be properly self-reflective about how she was - and given that she's bringing Sam Altman on her book tour, continues to be - involved in the systems that caused these problems.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:07 AM on April 4 [8 favorites]
from kliuless's link to the Slate article on the book tour guests:
It’s clear Swisher is sad about how the mainstream media has been gutted throughout her career, and is worried about what further havoc the A.I. race will wreak (and already has). Yet she gives her stamp of approval to Sam Altman, who’s trying to argue in a court of law that he should get to hoover up whatever copyright material he’d like in order to train his chatbots and image generators? Who’s offering battered news publishers only measly sums to strike deals in licensing their work? Who’s trying to artificially cheapen the sweltering costs of his gadgets by outsourcing content moderation to low-paid, traumatized workers in Kenya and India? (Don’t forget, also, that Reid Hoffman was a founding investor of OpenAI and is hard at work on his own text-generation A.I. products.)posted by spamandkimchi at 8:37 AM on April 4 [3 favorites]
It’s not as if others are much better. Bob Iger has cut National Geographic to the bone and trimmed budgets at ABC News and ESPN. Laurene Powell Jobs bought up big media properties, such as Atlantic Media, only to later junk valuable outlets like CityLab, California Sunday, and Pop-Up Magazine, while approving steep layoffs at the Atlantic itself.
This is the hottest of takes, but I have always seen Swisher as more of a scenester than a journalist, and I can tell you exactly why: Boing Boing. Even to the extent some of their contributors have entertained or provoked me over the years, and even to the extent I respect some of them (particularly Doctorow) within certain limits, it’s a huge scene clique. There is a deep archetypal connection in my brain between the sort of person with a solid history of bylines on Boing Boing and the sort of person who really needed to be seen at DNA Lounge in the early aughts. Within this clique, fin de siècle techno-utopianism never really died. Even at their most critical, the mounting lapses of the tech industry were reliably considered bad apples failing to fulfill the potential of a “New Economy” now a quarter century old.
Yes and thank you.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:45 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]
Yes and thank you.
posted by Halloween Jack at 8:45 AM on April 4 [2 favorites]
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posted by flabdablet at 1:53 AM on April 3 [8 favorites]