Zuckerberg, Musk and the man-children of tech are shown no mercy

Kara Swisher makes a strong case for the positive potential of technology and the tech sector in Burn Book, even as the journalist excoriates its abuses

Candour: Kara Swisher

Rory Kiberd

With online discourse as ­fractious as ever and AI even posing an existential threat, you would be ­forgiven for bristling at ­techno-optimism. But technology’s ­ascendancy can’t be slowed, so maybe we should take a constructive approach rather than tweeting our disgust into the void.

Last year, Jonathan Taplin wrote The End of Reality, an excoriating book on the grandees of Silicon Valley and their insatiable greed. It was brilliantly trenchant, but perhaps a little despairing. It’s easy to be catty from a distance. What makes journalist Kara Swisher’s new memoir refreshing is that it gets up close and personal with its subjects: cattiness and admiration are mingled together.