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https://theconversation.com/f-your-metaverse-kara-swisher-techs-most-feared-journalist-dishes-the-dirt-on-silicon-valley-227929>
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Review: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story – Kara Swisher (Piatkus)
Burn Book is that rare thing: a book about tech that can be enjoyed by
readers who are not that into tech. It is a witty and engaging account of the
rise (and often fall) of internet companies and the often dysfunctional talents
behind them, told by an exceptionally well-connected outsider.
Kara Swisher is somehow regarded as both Silicon Valley’s “most feared” and
“well-liked” journalist. Perhaps this is best encapsulated in her rollercoaster
relationship with Elon Musk, whom she knew, liked and often defended, but
publicly fell out with a month after his Twitter purchase was finalised,
telling him, “You may be my greatest disappointment in 25 years of covering
tech.”
Swisher claims to have been born in the same year as the internet: 1962. Even
as a child, “why” was her favourite word.
Her career took off at the
Washington Post, where she worked from the early
1990s on internet technology. Her interest was in the Silicon Valley geeks
behind it – at the time regarded as “a backwater to a backwater” – rather than
politics. A much-quoted line of hers, from the early 1990s, is that “everything
that can be digitised will be digitised”. This epiphany changed her career.
Swisher became riveted by the succession of “total domination followed by utter
collapse” of various technologies – from CD-ROMs to Myspace – and the
never-were businesses that just burned through investors’ funding and crashed –
including grocery delivery startup Webvan, online delivery company Kozmo and
fashion e-tailer Boo.com."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
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mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
