Mayday May Day in Uncanny Valley
Well it’s that time of year again when people ask, What’s a labor movement? Popular labor movements don’t seem very complicated, they simply demand that workers get paid for their productivity a fair wage relative to profits and receive fair treatment—think weekends, worker’s comp, pensions, equal pay…
Making others uncannily rich
We get ourselves out of the office and into a bar. We have more in common than our grievances, but we kick off by speculating about our job security, complaining about the bureaucratic double-downs, casting blame for blocks and poor product decisions. We talk about our IPO like it’s the deus ex machina coming down from on high to save us — like it’s an inevitability, like our stock options will lift us out of our existential dread, away from the collective anxiety that ebbs and flows. Realistically, we know it could be years before an IPO, if there’s an IPO at all; we know in our hearts that money is a salve, not a solution. Still, we are hopeful. We reassure ourselves and one another that this is just a phase; every start-up has its growing pains. Eventually we are drunk enough to change the subject, to remember our more private selves. The people we are on weekends, the people we were for years.
Anna Wiener’s portrait of working class silicon workers brought down the N+1 Wordpress the day it trended, suggesting that there is more disenchantment than appears. Uncanny Valley gives voice to a pithy non-engineer who sees past free snacks and happy hour and tries to find her own story amidst conversations of double meaning. Perhaps most relevant to readers here is the astute observation that “the internet is choked with blindly ambitious and professionally inexperienced men giving each other anecdote-based instruction and bullet-point advice.” Sounds like an epidemic.
The big abort
Perhaps the biggest lapse in judgment for all of those involved is the assumption that if we can just raise “one more round” everything will be fine. Founders have come to believe that more money is better, and the fluidity of the recent funding environment has led many to believe that heroic fundraising is a competitive advantage. Ironically, the exact opposite is true. The very best entrepreneurs are relatively advantaged in times of scarce capital. They can raise money in any environment. Loose capital allows the less qualified to participate in each market. This less qualified player brings more reckless execution which drags even the best entrepreneur onto an especially sloppy playing field. This threatens returns for all involved.
It’s hard to read Bill Gurley’s most recent pronouncement on Silicon Valley’s death spiral without wondering where anyone besides founders and investors, rank in the considerations of Silicon Valley. If there was ever a view from the other side of Weiner’s Boschian Valley of Uncanny Delights, it would be Gurley’s investor self absorption. I’m still undecided whether this is the tirade of a concerned citizen or the confessions of a venture capital hit man but I think the next essay has our answer.
Don’t disrupt the upward mobility myth
Still standing in the middle of the produce section with my phone against my face — the call over — I couldn’t decide whether to laugh or cry. With “all my education,” as my family would say, two degrees and the student loans to show for it, I was nonetheless positioned only marginally better off than my grandparents, who ran errands and did other grunt work two generations removed from where I now stood. Activity continued around me, and this glaring manifestation of what it meant to only slightly improve over one’s predecessors was a quiet, personal revelation that somehow moored me and kept me from imploding. I recognized a shared struggle between myself and them, a sort of inheritance. And unlike my grandparents, who had grade school educations and did factory and domestic work, I had options. Or at least, I thought I did.
Putting Valley woes aside, Buzzfeed Fellow Niela Orr’s memoir of ancestral journey shows how the unicorn grocery delivery company Instacart, not only reinforces society’s inequality but further disenfranchises service workers. How is it that in America, despite two college degrees, an African American woman would still be picking produce for rich people, much the same as her grandparents? Orr offers us a glimpse into the American myth of upward mobility this May Day.
Absolute data corrupts absolutely
Silence stretched between them as they sipped on the scotch.
“Un-fucking-believable,” said Richard, shaking his head. “Un-fucking-believable.”
“I must admit, I was shocked to see you walking out of Cumulus as I was walking in. Huian told me you had been let go.”
“That bitch,” said Richard, slamming a palm on the bar. The bartender gave them a look. “That arrogant, fussy little bitch. Riding her high horse, thinking she knows better than anyone else. Trying to tell me how to negotiate an acquisition. Me. I was doing deals when she was nothing but a nerdy Chinese twat in high school algebra. Someone should teach her a goddamn lesson.”
Graham repressed a grin. This was going to be even easier than he had anticipated. He was fairly certain that Huian Li had blazed through advanced algebra in elementary school. He also knew that her parents were Chinese Indonesian, not from mainland China. Huian herself had been born and raised in Palo Alto. But once the racism started flowing, all you needed to do was smile and nod.
How does all this labor–capital struggle play out? Here, a Bay Area native imagines how worker woes and social inequality play out. Eliot Peper was kind enough to send me an advance copy of Cumulus, a work of social science fiction based in Oakland. In it, Huian is an ambitious founder of an ominous technology company that oversees every aspect of our near future, from Fleet transport to Security protections. The obsessive execs at Cumulus are in a state of constant power brokering trying to acquire new startups, maintain security and keep lawsuits at bay. But even as living has become far easier for the technologentsia thanks to Cumulus services, Oakland remains broke and the region segregated into class zones—Green, Fringe and Slums. We’re introduced to Lilly, a broke on-demand Lancer and we catch a glimpse of life on the other side of the highway, in the Slums. Meanwhile Graham, a former secret agent turned Cumulus fixer is politicking Huian to ensure his indispensability. The novel in set in motion with the murder of an lawyer who’s suing Cumulus. Who’s really responsible and will they get away with their crimes?
Cumulus is an intriguing attempt to grapple with our present concerns about technology oligarchies, their influence over politics and the livelihoods of everyone else. Along the way it considers the implications of shallow libertarianism while science fiction prototyping early stage technologies and it does so with more declaration than dialog. Cumulus is due out this week on Amazon.
…That’s this week’s letter, an all around sombre one for May Day.
— @yungrama
