Perhaps Kara Swisher was destined to cover the internet, given that both she and it came into existence in 1962. Back then the web was envisioned as an Intergalactic Computer Network with the potential to deliver “unity among humankind, too, brought to you by the miracles of technology.” Assuming you agree we’ve fallen a smidge short of that lofty goal, for answers allow to me to recommend Swisher’s Burn Book. The reporter had no shortage of material to mold into her 300-page 2024 memoir, what with better than three decades chasing stories about the business side of the computerized world and doing laps in cesspools like Facebook and Twitter. Early-90’s Washington Post colleagues thought she was nuts to abandon the certainty of a DC-based career in journalism for nascent Silicon Valley. “Maybe I was like the people who wanted in on the Gold Rush,” she confesses. But unlike we-wanna-change-the-world bullshit artists, Swisher was greedy for the truth behind rapidly evolving technology, even eschewing opportunities for great wealth to continue needling shifty characters.
I read a chapter a morning over the course of several weeks, a rewarding experience. In doing so, the reader absorbs business do’s and don’ts not just from a crafty writer but also a budding entrepreneur in her own right. Swisher’s success is credited to her ability to straddle lines; she’s an interesting, approachable person who’s also quite a clever interviewer, whether one-on-one in whispered conversation or in front of live or virtual audiences. She’s also unfailingly fair, demonstrated in the book’s multiple passages exploring certain founders’ abhorrent practices. She reports: “Tech is littered with men whose parents – typically fathers – were either cruel or absent” informing worldviews that are “often born from a deep insecurity and loneliness, with hidden histories of pain channeled into ambition.” Her takes on Jeff Bezos (“pretty bloodless”), Mark Zuckerberg (“one of the most carelessly dangerous men in the history of technology”), Uber’s Travis Kalanick (“a face like a fist”), and, lest we forget, Elon Musk (“puckish to juvenile to deeply obnoxious”) explain a lot. Thank goodness when these pricks do immeasurable harm, like Helena Egan at Lumon, they promise to “be better.”
Swisher is also accountable enough to admit when she’s wrong. She clearly was about Musk when once wishing he’d leverage his carefree persona, endless wealth, and mission to remodel media by acquiring – gulp – Twitter. The thinking was Musk was power user of a product he loved and possessed the “skills to transform the platform into something that was more useful and easier to use.” Whoops. On a recent Ezra Klein Show, Swisher revealed Mark Cuban was the one person she knew from the jump how terrifying that transaction would turn out to be, with Musk’s fellow tech billionaire sensing a bullhorn of that size in the hands of one so reckless would have a massive negative impact on the world (and look no further than the neo-Nazi turnout for AfD in Germany’s recent election for all the evidence we need). Swisher stops short of calling Musk a ketamine-addled attention whore, but I won’t. That aside, this is an entertaining read thanks to the author’s witty storytelling style. So come for the humor, stay for the lessons, and then be afraid. Be very afraid.
If you have anything to say about this – or book recommendations – kindly post below (rather than emailing me) to spark conversation. Thank you!