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uninherent's review against another edition
5.0
Required reading for any avid technologist or cheerleader thereof hoping to “change the world” in $ill¥ con-arti$t Valle¥.
Very entertaining; both a personal account and a wider investigation into the misdeeds of the above demographic. The only thing missing is reflection on the gentrification aspect.
Very entertaining; both a personal account and a wider investigation into the misdeeds of the above demographic. The only thing missing is reflection on the gentrification aspect.
scribepub's review against another edition
In the spirit of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Corey Pein takes us on a gonzo misadventure through the underbelly of Silicon Valley, exposing the dystopian comedy behind the techno optimism with wry observation and gleeful contempt. A helluva ride.
Joe Hagan, Author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
All praise to Corey Pein for jumping headfirst into the cesspool of Silicon Valley and returning without having lost his mind or sold his soul. His reports from the front lines of the startup frenzy are hilarious and terrifying. While all eyes are glued on President Trump, a shortsighted and reactionary techno-oligarchy aims to amass a fortune at the cost of the common good. There’s no app that can save us. But this book can at least wake us up to the dystopian future under construction.
Astra Taylor, Author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
Pein’s absurdly funny journey is a Through-the-Looking-Glass tale for the dying days of tech utopianism. Built on the creative vanity of this new class of talentless speculator and designed entirely without human need in mind, this world of nonsense quickly turns dystopian when seen from the perspective of a worker and renter trying to make his way through it.
Angela Nagle, Author of Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right
You sleep in a pantry because you can’t afford a real apartment. You exploit yourself, destroy your health, and ruin the lives of millions when you finally succeed. You think of crime as a great business model. You embrace some of the worst politics ever devised. And you call it progress. Silicon Valley, the capitalist miracle. That is the American nightmare as Corey Pein brilliantly describes it, and it is not a work of the imagination. This is really happening, and soon it will be happening to you.
Thomas Frank, Author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Both entertaining and damning, Pein’s book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be.
Publisher’s Weekly
Deeply unsettling … A clearheaded reckoning with the consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.
Kirkus Reviews
Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humour and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.
Booklist
The Silicon Valley that Pein uncovers is not unlike dystopian visions we are accustomed to seeing in science fiction.
The New Republic
Impressive ... Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels in both style and conceit, Live Work Work Work Die is a combination of New Journalism and muckraking told with an anthropological eye ... Alternately amusing and horrifying.
Salon
Fluent … entertaining … funny.
Justin Tyler Clark, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Despite and perhaps a little because of its lackadaisical approach to its subject, Live Work Work Work Die manages to capture something essential about Silicon Valley that has eluded other authors.
Nikil Saval, The New York Times
Pein's vivid account makes for fascinating reading about Silicon Valley and the tech industry and the often heartbreaking experiences of would-be entrepreneurs/techies struggling to achieve success.
Lucy Heckman, Library Journal
American investigative reporter Corey Pein is the latest to join the so-called “tech-lash”, the global pushback against the supremacy of tech … Pein identifies a growing “tech fascist” movement that embraces dubious philosophies and “neo-reactionary” ideas such as eugenics and the abolition of universities and government.
Megan Lehmann, The Australian
His just-published book, Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley, portrays a corrosive culture: start-ups funded by millions of dollars of venture capital where employees struggle to describe what is actually being produced; stressed start-up “chief executives” who work like navvies and rarely see pay-day; venture capitalists who would happily support an enterprise that would break the law so long as they could get in and out before everything collapsed; and a naked interest by those at the top in turning consumers into lab rats.
Shelley Gare, The Saturday Age
The book is a must read for any young people interested in working in technology.
Zachary Houle, Medium
An incisive portrait of a self-obsessed industry hellbent on succeeding by whatever means necessary.
Martin Coulter, Business Insider Australia
Joe Hagan, Author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
All praise to Corey Pein for jumping headfirst into the cesspool of Silicon Valley and returning without having lost his mind or sold his soul. His reports from the front lines of the startup frenzy are hilarious and terrifying. While all eyes are glued on President Trump, a shortsighted and reactionary techno-oligarchy aims to amass a fortune at the cost of the common good. There’s no app that can save us. But this book can at least wake us up to the dystopian future under construction.
Astra Taylor, Author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
Pein’s absurdly funny journey is a Through-the-Looking-Glass tale for the dying days of tech utopianism. Built on the creative vanity of this new class of talentless speculator and designed entirely without human need in mind, this world of nonsense quickly turns dystopian when seen from the perspective of a worker and renter trying to make his way through it.
Angela Nagle, Author of Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right
You sleep in a pantry because you can’t afford a real apartment. You exploit yourself, destroy your health, and ruin the lives of millions when you finally succeed. You think of crime as a great business model. You embrace some of the worst politics ever devised. And you call it progress. Silicon Valley, the capitalist miracle. That is the American nightmare as Corey Pein brilliantly describes it, and it is not a work of the imagination. This is really happening, and soon it will be happening to you.
Thomas Frank, Author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Both entertaining and damning, Pein’s book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be.
Publisher’s Weekly
Deeply unsettling … A clearheaded reckoning with the consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.
Kirkus Reviews
Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humour and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.
Booklist
The Silicon Valley that Pein uncovers is not unlike dystopian visions we are accustomed to seeing in science fiction.
The New Republic
Impressive ... Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels in both style and conceit, Live Work Work Work Die is a combination of New Journalism and muckraking told with an anthropological eye ... Alternately amusing and horrifying.
Salon
Fluent … entertaining … funny.
Justin Tyler Clark, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Despite and perhaps a little because of its lackadaisical approach to its subject, Live Work Work Work Die manages to capture something essential about Silicon Valley that has eluded other authors.
Nikil Saval, The New York Times
Pein's vivid account makes for fascinating reading about Silicon Valley and the tech industry and the often heartbreaking experiences of would-be entrepreneurs/techies struggling to achieve success.
Lucy Heckman, Library Journal
American investigative reporter Corey Pein is the latest to join the so-called “tech-lash”, the global pushback against the supremacy of tech … Pein identifies a growing “tech fascist” movement that embraces dubious philosophies and “neo-reactionary” ideas such as eugenics and the abolition of universities and government.
Megan Lehmann, The Australian
His just-published book, Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley, portrays a corrosive culture: start-ups funded by millions of dollars of venture capital where employees struggle to describe what is actually being produced; stressed start-up “chief executives” who work like navvies and rarely see pay-day; venture capitalists who would happily support an enterprise that would break the law so long as they could get in and out before everything collapsed; and a naked interest by those at the top in turning consumers into lab rats.
Shelley Gare, The Saturday Age
The book is a must read for any young people interested in working in technology.
Zachary Houle, Medium
An incisive portrait of a self-obsessed industry hellbent on succeeding by whatever means necessary.
Martin Coulter, Business Insider Australia
scribepub's review
In the spirit of George Orwell’s Down and Out in Paris and London, Corey Pein takes us on a gonzo misadventure through the underbelly of Silicon Valley, exposing the dystopian comedy behind the techno optimism with wry observation and gleeful contempt. A helluva ride.
Joe Hagan, Author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
All praise to Corey Pein for jumping headfirst into the cesspool of Silicon Valley and returning without having lost his mind or sold his soul. His reports from the front lines of the startup frenzy are hilarious and terrifying. While all eyes are glued on President Trump, a shortsighted and reactionary techno-oligarchy aims to amass a fortune at the cost of the common good. There’s no app that can save us. But this book can at least wake us up to the dystopian future under construction.
Astra Taylor, Author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in The Digital Age
Pein’s absurdly funny journey is a Through-the-Looking-Glass tale for the dying days of tech utopianism. Built on the creative vanity of this new class of talentless speculator and designed entirely without human need in mind, this world of nonsense quickly turns dystopian when seen from the perspective of a worker and renter trying to make his way through it.
Angela Nagle, Author of Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right
You sleep in a pantry because you can’t afford a real apartment. You exploit yourself, destroy your health, and ruin the lives of millions when you finally succeed. You think of crime as a great business model. You embrace some of the worst politics ever devised. And you call it progress. Silicon Valley, the capitalist miracle. That is the American nightmare as Corey Pein brilliantly describes it, and it is not a work of the imagination. This is really happening, and soon it will be happening to you.
Thomas Frank, Author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Both entertaining and damning, Pein’s book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be.
Publishers Weekly
Deeply unsettling … A clearheaded reckoning with the consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.
Kirkus Reviews
Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humour and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.
Booklist
The Silicon Valley that Pein uncovers is not unlike dystopian visions we are accustomed to seeing in science fiction.
The New Republic
Impressive ... Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels in both style and conceit, Live Work Work Work Die is a combination of New Journalism and muckraking told with an anthropological eye ... Alternately amusing and horrifying.
Salon
Fluent … entertaining … funny.
Justin Tyler Clark, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Despite and perhaps a little because of its lackadaisical approach to its subject, Live Work Work Work Die manages to capture something essential about Silicon Valley that has eluded other authors.
Nikil Saval, The New York Times
Pein's vivid account makes for fascinating reading about Silicon Valley and the tech industry and the often heartbreaking experiences of would-be entrepreneurs/techies struggling to achieve success.
Lucy Heckman, Library Journal
American investigative reporter Corey Pein is the latest to join the so-called “tech-lash”, the global pushback against the supremacy of tech … Pein identifies a growing “tech fascist” movement that embraces dubious philosophies and “neo-reactionary” ideas such as eugenics and the abolition of universities and government.
Megan Lehmann, The Australian
His just-published book, Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley, portrays a corrosive culture: start-ups funded by millions of dollars of venture capital where employees struggle to describe what is actually being produced; stressed start-up “chief executives” who work like navvies and rarely see pay-day; venture capitalists who would happily support an enterprise that would break the law so long as they could get in and out before everything collapsed; and a naked interest by those at the top in turning consumers into lab rats.
Shelley Gare, The Saturday Age
The book is a must read for any young people interested in working in technology.
Zachary Houle, Medium
An incisive portrait of a self-obsessed industry hellbent on succeeding by whatever means necessary.
Martin Coulter, Business Insider Australia
Joe Hagan, Author of Sticky Fingers: The Life and Times of Jann Wenner and Rolling Stone Magazine
All praise to Corey Pein for jumping headfirst into the cesspool of Silicon Valley and returning without having lost his mind or sold his soul. His reports from the front lines of the startup frenzy are hilarious and terrifying. While all eyes are glued on President Trump, a shortsighted and reactionary techno-oligarchy aims to amass a fortune at the cost of the common good. There’s no app that can save us. But this book can at least wake us up to the dystopian future under construction.
Astra Taylor, Author of The People’s Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in The Digital Age
Pein’s absurdly funny journey is a Through-the-Looking-Glass tale for the dying days of tech utopianism. Built on the creative vanity of this new class of talentless speculator and designed entirely without human need in mind, this world of nonsense quickly turns dystopian when seen from the perspective of a worker and renter trying to make his way through it.
Angela Nagle, Author of Kill All Normies: Online Culture Wars From 4Chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right
You sleep in a pantry because you can’t afford a real apartment. You exploit yourself, destroy your health, and ruin the lives of millions when you finally succeed. You think of crime as a great business model. You embrace some of the worst politics ever devised. And you call it progress. Silicon Valley, the capitalist miracle. That is the American nightmare as Corey Pein brilliantly describes it, and it is not a work of the imagination. This is really happening, and soon it will be happening to you.
Thomas Frank, Author of Listen, Liberal and What’s the Matter with Kansas?
Both entertaining and damning, Pein’s book unmasks the shell game being run by venture capitalists in an industry that is not nearly as benign as it claims to be.
Publishers Weekly
Deeply unsettling … A clearheaded reckoning with the consequences of the tech industry’s disruptions and the ideology that undergirds it.
Kirkus Reviews
Like Jon Ronson, Pein combines serious journalism with humour and his own antics for an entertaining and caustic mix. If Silicon Valley and Black Mirror had a book baby, it would be Live Work Work Work Die.
Booklist
The Silicon Valley that Pein uncovers is not unlike dystopian visions we are accustomed to seeing in science fiction.
The New Republic
Impressive ... Reminiscent of Hunter S. Thompson’s Hell’s Angels in both style and conceit, Live Work Work Work Die is a combination of New Journalism and muckraking told with an anthropological eye ... Alternately amusing and horrifying.
Salon
Fluent … entertaining … funny.
Justin Tyler Clark, The Los Angeles Review of Books
Despite and perhaps a little because of its lackadaisical approach to its subject, Live Work Work Work Die manages to capture something essential about Silicon Valley that has eluded other authors.
Nikil Saval, The New York Times
Pein's vivid account makes for fascinating reading about Silicon Valley and the tech industry and the often heartbreaking experiences of would-be entrepreneurs/techies struggling to achieve success.
Lucy Heckman, Library Journal
American investigative reporter Corey Pein is the latest to join the so-called “tech-lash”, the global pushback against the supremacy of tech … Pein identifies a growing “tech fascist” movement that embraces dubious philosophies and “neo-reactionary” ideas such as eugenics and the abolition of universities and government.
Megan Lehmann, The Australian
His just-published book, Live Work Work Work Die: A Journey Into the Savage Heart of Silicon Valley, portrays a corrosive culture: start-ups funded by millions of dollars of venture capital where employees struggle to describe what is actually being produced; stressed start-up “chief executives” who work like navvies and rarely see pay-day; venture capitalists who would happily support an enterprise that would break the law so long as they could get in and out before everything collapsed; and a naked interest by those at the top in turning consumers into lab rats.
Shelley Gare, The Saturday Age
The book is a must read for any young people interested in working in technology.
Zachary Houle, Medium
An incisive portrait of a self-obsessed industry hellbent on succeeding by whatever means necessary.
Martin Coulter, Business Insider Australia
otterno11's review
dark
funny
informative
medium-paced
4.0
Even after a few years, Corey Pein’s Live Work Work Work Die remains a very relevant book, laying out all the dark connotations that continue to undergird the techno-utopian, hyper-capitalist Silicon Valley ideology. Beginning the work on a fairly light note, Pein embeds himself in the Bay Area startup culture in the gonzo journalist tradition, living in a San Francisco gutted by Airbnb and Uber. Encountering various zany eccentrics, pompous buffoons, and hapless workers all struggling to hit on some “disruption” to an existing idea and attract some venture capital funding, Pein mocks and critiques the ridiculous attitudes and exposes the human costs of things like the “sharing” economy, gig work, and data mining. He even embarks on a quixotic startup of his own, attempting to sell a parodic, contradictory, and illegal app to facilitate unionizing the workforces of corporate competitors in an attempt to call out the bizarre, surreal extremes of this modern day gold rush.
However, as the “shovel peddlers” of tech prosper by taking advantage of these hopefuls (not to mention the less wealthy populations of the Bay Area) and its dystopian elements become more evident, the darker connotations of the Silicon Valley worldview begin to come into focus- surprise, it’s fascism! Delving into the fetid endgame of these toxic viewpoints, Pein pieces together some of the troubling ideological threads connecting many of the power brokers of Silicon Valley and their eager followers alike, including the influence of such reactionary currents as neoreaction. At best, men steeped in an emotionally arid environment unwilling to imagine the consequences of their ideas aside from novelty, or at worst, with an already negative, oppressive view of humanity in general and of their supposed superiority to the rest of us, whether due to race, gender, ability, or economic background.
As the long vaunted “singularity,” a supposed magic moment in which all human problems are solved by technological innovations allowing for efficient control of society never seems to come, a “libertarian to fascist pipeline” channels the frustrations of believers into explicitly authoritarian, anti-democratic, and racist directions. As tech continues to entangle our lives, as plans are made to draw people in even further through the implementation of such things as a “metaverse,” Pein’s work in exploring the influences over is an important, if unsettling, resource.
However, as the “shovel peddlers” of tech prosper by taking advantage of these hopefuls (not to mention the less wealthy populations of the Bay Area) and its dystopian elements become more evident, the darker connotations of the Silicon Valley worldview begin to come into focus- surprise, it’s fascism! Delving into the fetid endgame of these toxic viewpoints, Pein pieces together some of the troubling ideological threads connecting many of the power brokers of Silicon Valley and their eager followers alike, including the influence of such reactionary currents as neoreaction. At best, men steeped in an emotionally arid environment unwilling to imagine the consequences of their ideas aside from novelty, or at worst, with an already negative, oppressive view of humanity in general and of their supposed superiority to the rest of us, whether due to race, gender, ability, or economic background.
As the long vaunted “singularity,” a supposed magic moment in which all human problems are solved by technological innovations allowing for efficient control of society never seems to come, a “libertarian to fascist pipeline” channels the frustrations of believers into explicitly authoritarian, anti-democratic, and racist directions. As tech continues to entangle our lives, as plans are made to draw people in even further through the implementation of such things as a “metaverse,” Pein’s work in exploring the influences over is an important, if unsettling, resource.
kellis22's review against another edition
1.0
If I wasn't getting paid to read and discuss this book- I would have never picked it up.