The title and subtitle of Kara Swisher‘s new book, “Burn Book: A Tech Love Story,” perfectly illustrate the dichotomy of her career as a journalist and entrepreneur, in which she has been simultaneously captivated by the rise of digital technologies and disappointed by many of the people bringing these innovations into the world.
As a longtime follower of Swisher’s career, listener of her podcasts, and admirer of her reporting, I finished the memoir over the weekend. I found it enlightening and inspiring, filling in the gaps in her personal story and her approach as a journalist, with plenty of behind-the-scenes tidbits to keep the story moving.
Most of all, the book is pure Kara, including her unvarnished take on the tech elite.
I say this without bias because GeekWire is not mentioned in the book, and the fact that I know this is proof that I read the entire thing, because, as she writes at the end, “There is no index, people. So, you have to read the whole book all the way through to see if you’re in it. I’ll be honest—most of you are not.”
As I said, it’s pure Kara.
So was her talk Tuesday night at Town Hall Seattle, an on-stage conversation with Alex Stamos, the former Facebook and Yahoo chief security officer (who does get a mention in the book, by the way, a favorable name check in Swisher’s chapter on “The Mensches” of the technology industry).
A longtime Seattle-based tech journalist could easily quibble with the fact that Stamos and Swisher didn’t play more to the local crowd with deeper discussions about our region’s key players — enough about Zuck’s inadequate education already, sheesh — but I’ll set that aside and just share a few of my favorite quotes, takeaways, and zingers from the event.
Why she waited more than two decades to write a new book: “I got asked to write books all the time during those ensuing years. I never really wanted to because I didn’t think the story was over, or finished. …
“Then it got perfect because of two things. One, the tech companies got so big during COVID, got so enormous and so powerful. It started to really disturb me because they had no guardrails around them. …The second part was that AGI [artificial general intelligence] had become a thing, and so you can see, we’re at another inflection point. …
“I thought, someone has to tell people what these people were like, historically, and tell the truth. … We’re heading into the most important phase. When are we going to take back control? It’s sort of like if I was around during Standard Oil and I knew them before. It was my duty to do that, so that’s why I did.”
Tagging along with Jeff Bezos to one of Amazon’s early offices: “I took Jeff Bezos to see his first headquarters in a shitty section of Seattle. I went with him because he was like, maybe I could protect him. He was a skinny little guy. He probably was like, ‘Oh, I’ll take the lesbian with me.’ “
Steve Jobs was a jerk about getting things right: “He was not jerky in the way these people [many of today’s tech leaders] are jerky. I think they treat people badly. They lack empathy. They don’t care. They create products that aren’t safe.”
On the value of “reported analysis” from knowledgeable journalists: “As a beat reporter you’re writing, ‘This happened today at Google; this happened today at Amazon.’ … The reason why I left and did AllThingsD is I thought we should do something we call reported analysis. We did killer reporting, and then we said, ‘Well, this is a mess, or this is great.’ I think [longtime colleague and business partner] Walt Mossberg really defined that, which is he did amazing reporting, and then he said what he thought. I think that’s valuable to audiences.”
On the fake AI-generated ‘companions’ to her book: “I collect them all, and I send them to [Amazon CEO] Andy Jassy, and I’m like, ‘Hey, dude, what the fuck?’ … Of course, I’m sure Amazon scrambled the jets because they’re like, ‘Oh shit, it’s her.’ ”
Want more? As Kara would no doubt say, read the fucking book.
GeekWire managing editor Taylor Soper contributed to this story.
