We Like You So Much and Want to Know You Better

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/29/magazine/dave-eggers-fiction.html?smid=tw-nytmag&_r=1&

by jseliger • 13 years ago

180 56 13 years ago

Perfect. A much friendlier, much more social, much more corporate 1984.

(Another heartbreaking work of staggering genius?)

edit: Yes, it's pretty transparently a reference to Google. Zings sound more like tweets, though. And monitoring everything has turned out to be primarily the NSA's job, but I guess he finished the book before that scandal came to real light.

theoj• 13 years ago

It seems to be a subtle critique of Google. I read it as Circle = Google, ad business where Mae works = AdWords, tablets = Android, zings = tweets / Google+ shares, new camera = Google Glass.

kawera• 13 years ago

Or maybe a critique of Google + FB + TW, if not of the pervasive "ideology" that permeates the whole social media/cloud everywhere discourse.

kazagistar• 13 years ago

You don't even have to work for a social media company to see the "community building" pressure; any modern, web-friendly, "agile" firm is trying to get its employees to invest themselves into the company. If you are part of the community, its harder to switch jobs.

varjag• 13 years ago

Odd, until I read that, I thought it refers to Apple. The culture of neatness, perfectionism, gadget obsession, even the motto stones that reek APPL slogans.

hrkristian• 13 years ago

Apple is generally referred to as the "company where millions; billions want to be" so like you that's where I initially landed.

I don't see how your parent made the transition from modernized 1984 (which was very astute IMO) to Google. This to me is a critique of corporate culture, and, perhaps more than anything of Silicon Valley culture.

Seems to me the author did a good job of keeping the text open, the comment field is rife with personal bias and it took me two iterations to get rid of the knee-jerk Google defense.

ricardobeat• 13 years ago

"every wall made of glass", customer experience, blonde wood, ergonomically perfect desks and organic mattresses, engraved tablets, etc, all clearly Apple references.

Kluny• 13 years ago

I wouldn't say genius - I found the moral to be about as unsubtle as a jackhammer, and the writing style irritating.

angersock• 13 years ago

Maybe that's not such a bad thing. Most folks still haven't figured out the privacy and security implications of using social networks.

jonah2• 13 years ago

Or maybe A Brave New World.

Neil Postman compares them: http://www.prosebeforehos.com/image-of-the-day/08/24/huxley-...

philwelch3• 13 years ago

I find it richly ironic when that comic gets posted on these blog networks. Hint: look at the rest of the web page.

Someone• 13 years ago

I think it is more general a critique of current culture (a combination if "you haven't done anything until you have told the world" and "you must have something to hide if you do something but don't tell the world about it", the latter a bit more implicit)

Apart from the hardware, it could be Facebook, too. And, surely, it could be Microsoft, in a few years time.

"Zing" is a beautiful term, by the way. It resembles 'to sing' (especially for those who speak Dutch), with all its positive correlations. And, of course, the name is taken; both zing.com and zing.nl exist.

jellicle• 13 years ago

"Zing" in English has negative connotations; to "zing" someone is to make a witty but hurtful remark to them.

So "zing" is both the kind of term that COULD be taken over by a social media service (like "tweet" has been taken over), and at the same time is a negative commentary on what you're actually doing when you use that social media service.

I assume that that was the meaning intended, since the author is writing in English.

001sky• 13 years ago

The editors note

http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/this-sunday-who...

cldr• 13 years ago

"All that happens must be known."

Wow. So much insidiousness packed into six little words.

They conveniently forget to mention by whom it should be known.

brown9-24• 13 years ago

It's almost like maybe that will be a theme of the novel!

ttflee• 13 years ago

Incredible.

For everything being known by all, it would take O(N!) edges for N vertices. Which type of satellites could hold under this throughput? It's just purely incredible!

troymc• 13 years ago

If this story has gotten you down, wondering if we've created an inescapable dystopia, then this page may brighten your spirits --- an existence proof of another option --- the one that's worked well for Donald Knuth (whose contributions to the tech industry are indisputable):

http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/email.html

pfortuny• 13 years ago

Well, there is a tiny detail: "I have a wonderful secretary." Not all of us can afford that...

mjcohen• 13 years ago

Another tiny detail: He is Donald Knuth.

ZirconCode• 13 years ago

"Each generation is best defined by its fears"*

*butchered, don't know the original author of the quote I was trying to find and can't find it via google, but I know it's there somewhere

_greim_• 13 years ago

Good grief. What an awful placement for a Flash ad. The 'x' button is inaccessible, presumably because it got accidentally layered behind the masthead.

elwell3• 13 years ago

adblock?

brown9-24• 13 years ago

There are some accusations that the plot of this adaptation are very similar to a real memoir published by Kate Losse:

https://medium.com/p/bf1a7c77873b

wallflower• 13 years ago

I read Kate Losse's book in preparation for reading this one.

The general schema of her book is she became obsessed with Facebook while just a user. So she applied when she saw a job ad for Facebook (on Facebook). Started out in customer service (later renamed to something else because customers are people who pay for a service). The engineers and the engineering floor was the place to be. She managed to make it to their domain through a clever side project of her own. Facebook started to grow up once Sheryl Sandberg came in. She made it all the way to the inner sanctum (ghost writing for MZ).

It really is a quick read. The parallels that I will be looking for - does DE's character protagonist start to reject the 'cult' culture gradually over time - all the while jumping and up the ranks.

The supporting details of the story are what matter: Since FBers all had inside knowledge of FB and couldn't manage to slip up and spill projects under development in casual social encounters, they started close-circling their social lives until they just basically hung out night-and-day with other fellow FB employees. And there was a nice passage where she described an ephemeral experience and how it could not be FB'd. Also, a widely reported FB anecdote - female employees had to wear shirts with MZ's face on it and male employees had to wear sandals on MZ's birthay (she called in sick - it was too much). All FB company events were professionally photographed - not an accident they looked good (so as to project the best FB brand - smiles, we're all having young young fun fun fun)... There was a pivotal moment with a co-worker where they did not go forward (romantically, in the moment) because of what would all their co-workers say when it was FB'd... The summer pool house was her idea - and she ruled that domain pool-side with her fellow non-geeks.

I have a lot of respect for what Eggers has done with 826 Valencia, The Writing Center. If he has co-opted Kate's personal story (including some details, like above - even if slightly refactored), I will be sad.

http://826valencia.org

kmfrk• 13 years ago

Losse says she'll probably post an excerpt of her book for people to compare with Eggers's: https://twitter.com/fake_train/status/383965453283913728.

brown9-24• 13 years ago

The parallels that I will be looking for - does DE's character protagonist start to reject the 'cult' culture gradually over time

To be honest, it's hard to see how any work of fiction on a topic like this - on a trajectory like the one the excerpt here sets up - could not have this trait, "plagarized" or not.

enko• 13 years ago

I really like the story. I recognise it, partially.

Downvoting you because your link is to unrelated "Patriarchy 101" nonsense.

unimpressive• 13 years ago

This context isn't in her article. But it is related. Basically she wrote a book about her experience at Facebook, and is claiming that Egger plagiarized it for his book.

(From what I can tell anyway.)

brown9-24• 13 years ago

From the article:

So, when Dave Eggers decided to rewrite my book as his own novel about a young woman working her way up through Facebook...

It appears that Eggers’ recent pattern in his books is to take the story of the “other”— in one case a Sudanese child soldier,in the next a Katrina survivor, and now, the story of a woman in tech— and repackage them under his name. The difference is that in the first two cases he named the source of his material. In my case, because I am a woman, and therefore am subject to erasure by the media avant la lettre, that wasn’t necessary.

It is not the most concise piece of writing, I will give you that.

aridiculous2• 13 years ago

I fail to see the connection between ripping off work and societal privilege as a young, white male.

It's plausible, I admit. But much more likely, to me, is just artistic exploitation 101 (if it turns out he did borrow a lot from her story). She has a specific problem with Eggers getting away with it. She would too if her article was published in the NY Times. She seems to be playing identity politics in a situation that doesn't warrant it: Perhaps she was unlucky in her career? Perhaps Eggers has better agents? Perhaps Eggers is a better writer, or has more experience? Perhaps Eggers' brother works at the NY Times? I would posit that, in this case, it's unlikely that Eggers had his piece published and got away with ripping off her article because he is a white male.

I recognize that sexism and racism definitely exist in Silicon Valley, but the problem she's trying to point out is broader — it's the overzealous linguistic bullshit promoted throughout culture (and that includes other industries, mind you). It's the 'engineering perspective' applied to all situations without discretion. Solve every problem in all domains like its a physics problem. Silicon Valley has a penchant for hyperbole and thus is always "killing," "disrupting," and "breaking" things.

In a linked essay, she declares it to be myopic to promote Facebook's mantra of "move fast and break things" because it leads to unjustly enforced criminal activities like trespassing — and might be "rapey" ("rapey" is her language). Facebook's mantra started in the context of writing internet software. Minorities and women have little disadvantage in that specific context. The problem rose when the life advice language got so widespread (applied to every possible situation in Medium blog posts) as to become meaningless. Now she's pissed off because minorities and women can't get away with breaking things and asking for forgiveness in all areas of life, but young, white men can...and that's exemplified through the popular philosophy of Silicon Valley. First, that again is so broad as to be meaningless (e.g. I can think of plenty of examples where being a young woman let's you get away with things others' can't). Second, "act first and then ask for forgiveness" and related Ferrissisms are all tropes carried over from other industries and books (ever heard of 'sales'?). Third, it targets Silicon Valley as the epicenter of discrimination, which kind of makes it look like she's never worked or lived in any other industry or area of the world.

nonce42• 13 years ago

Her claim that "“don’t ask for permission” is a dangerously rapey lesson to teach young men" is rather bizarre, given that the expression is attributed to Grace Hopper (specifically "It's easier to ask forgiveness than it is to get permission." http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper) It's extra ironic that Kate Losse complains that the work of women in computer science is ignored and erased, while not recognizing the contribution of Admiral Hopper.

straws• 13 years ago

What an oddly responsive page

hjay2• 13 years ago

Wow, I could never write this well in a million years, but as I was reading, I couldn't help but feel that this was a blog post that I've been wanting to write for a while.

Without going on a rant and hi-jacking this thread, replacing "Participation Rank" with "consumption of beer/alcohol", "gathering" with "late night beer party", "Dad had a seizure" with "Mom was very sick", "kayak" with "badminton", "profile" with "LinkedIn", and you have 100% of my story give and take a few breaks in flow and sentence structure errors that are bound to happen with simple string replacement.

Guess it's time to finally go write that blog post.

droithomme• 13 years ago

Please do and report back if you have a chance, it sounds like it will be a good one and I'd love to read it.

hjay2• 13 years ago

Hmm, since the demand is > 0 now, I guess I will! Not too sure how to get reply notifications on HN though, I always lose track of responses.

aridiculous2• 13 years ago

https://www.dropcam.com/cameras/featured

== lollipop cam

jamesaguilar• 13 years ago

I don't recognize my workplace, or that of my friends, in this story. It is a great fictional story. But hopefully you guys are aware that this is not what working at Google (or, I assume, Facebook or Twitter) is like. And I say that as someone who is IRL married to a consumer experience specialist.

psn• 13 years ago

I'm a employee of a large tech company that's being parodied here, and I found this really disconcerting. The scenes with the boss and HR are completely different to my experience. No one cares what I do at the weekend. No one cares about my social media presence. No one cares if I use the company's products or not.

A few clear examples: one of my grandparents passed away, and the company was as supportive as possible. I asked if I could work from my parents house to be with my grandmother, and I got back "You can work from another country for an open ended period. If you aren't getting anything done, let me know, and we'll call it compassionate leave". There are people who go out socializing, but I've never felt pressured to go along. There are people who work long hours or the weekend, but again, I've never felt pressured to do that either.

Edit: When the company was newer, the employees worked very long hours and weekends. They worked, mind you. Everyone I know from that era is remarkably well off. The vast majority of the early employees have retired to spend more time with their wealth. I'm much more concerned, as a person, about either the big companies that do massive crunches (see ea spouse) or the startups that fails despite everyone working really hard, the employees don't get the 100 million dollar payday.

g8oz• 13 years ago

Exaggerating reveals the point. That is the satirical technique in action. And this is about poking fun at a) the enthusiastic self regard that many tech companies have for their "culture" and b) the notion of the unlimited benefits of self-surveillance, which is a value social networking has explicitly and implicitly promoted.

visakanv3• 13 years ago

aw shush, stop letting truth get in the way of a good story!

elwell3• 13 years ago

The illustrations are great. And, I learned a new word:

preternaturally - in a supernatural manner

arh68• 13 years ago

All that happens must be known.

Yeah, okay :D. What a lie. We have film for every Super Bowl, every World Cup, probably every 6 o'clock news since 1960. But who's seen it? Who goes back on old recorded video when there is a live feed? I've met none.

Who won the tenth Super Bowl? The first World Cup? Normal people don't know these things. First response is to google it. The computers remember, but nobody knows anything.

There is a huge difference Encylopedia Brittanica (or perhaps a downloaded Wikipedia) and this millions-of-cameras-recording-everything. With live coverage, nobody watches old tape. A set of EB is finite, open for static inspection, colocated with your living room. An ever-growing dataset of millions of camera feeds (colocated 3 states away) is, to the human brain, useless. The magnitude's far too large. Why write anything down if you can pull up the feed? Why record anything with a DVR/VCR when it's online? Why 'know' anything at all when the computer can tell you?

WINSTON SMITH enters stage right

JosephHatfield• 13 years ago

Can't possibly be a reference to Google--they don't have a customer service department! (do they?)

ds9• 13 years ago

This is very close to reality. Looking at tech news today, just after this story, my next tab was a report on businessinsider.com [1] that Google is now making bonuses partly dependent on the success of Google's social netowrk effort - and encouraging employees to use G+ and recruit friends and family to it.

Clearly we have a minority of the population concerned about the erosion of privacy, colliding with a culture of sharing everything (openly with friends and family, invisibly with the online services and governments). The story and the news article (like previous hints that employers are suspicious of anyone who's not on Facebook) point up an additional new element of "soft" coercion.

1. http://www.businessinsider.com/larry-page-just-tied-employee...

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