The biggest thing Kara Swisher did in her new book, Burn Book: A Tech Love Story, was to make sure there was no index.
“So I have to read this book to the end to find out if I'm in it,” she wrote to herself. “To be honest, most of you don't.”
Few business journalists of this generation have had as much influence within the industries they cover as Swisher. Speaking in downtown Minneapolis on Tuesday to promote the book, she explained how she came to be loved and hated by some of the richest and most powerful people in American business. Told.
“I tended to differentiate between adults and men,” Ms. Swisher told the audience at Westminster Presbyterian Church. “You don't have to be childish to invent something.”
For 15 years, Swisher and I were part of a team of about 40 people covering the technology industry at the Wall Street Journal. I was based in Dallas and then in Asia, far from the core group in San Francisco that included Swisher. Still, if he gave me a dollar for every time someone asked me to introduce him to Swisher or Walt Mossberg, our magazine's first and legendarily honest technology product reviewer, I would like to give my It will be a nice addition to your retirement savings.
When I was covering the Dell-Compaq PC wars of the late 1990s, Swisher noted that power was rapidly shifting from manufacturing companies to Internet-focused startups like Netscape, Yahoo, and America Online. I noticed that.
In his book, Swisher said it was important for the magazine to focus on PC hardware and software. “But for me, it was like focusing on the internals of a mechanical watch, the combination of gears, calipers and gaskets that most people didn't understand or care to know about. The internet was different. “I was determined to tell people instead of telling them what the clock was like. It worked, but what time was it?” she wrote.
A year or so later, Swisher became a columnist. Her influence grew as she broke the news on the latest deals and layoffs, breaking through the hype and pretension of the mostly young men at these Internet companies. “One of the things I love about technology is the immediacy and urgency of the people who work with it,” she said in Westminster on Tuesday. “They're making things.”
Later, she and Mossberg hosted a must-see conference that became a headline-grabbing event with celebrities such as Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg. In recent years, she has made a name for herself as a columnist for the New York Times and as a podcast host for Vox and New York Magazine.
Mr. Swisher's optimism about the transformative power of Internet companies diminished after the rise of social media businesses. Privacy flew out the window. Addiction and mental health problems skyrocketed. Political and economic power was concentrated. Regulators couldn't stop it or do anything about it.
“There are no regulations regarding technology,” Swisher said. “Tobacco can't kill you, but it does harm in other ways. It's not as obvious as cigarettes, but there are addiction issues, there are suicide issues, there are mental health issues.”
Swisher has high hopes for senior Minnesota Sen. Amy Klobuchar, who has developed expertise in antitrust issues and has proposed several laws to thwart the power of search and social media companies. said.
“She tries really hard, so she calls me every time and says, 'It worked this time,' and I say, 'No, you don't,'” Swisher said. said. “This is now ours.”
Swisher said the Minnesota Democratic Party has been repeatedly defeated by tech companies' money and lobbying efforts toward lawmakers and political parties. It's something senators have often discussed in public.
“She's been forced out of her stuff by tech companies that spend a lot of money on lobbying, and both Democrats and Republicans are falling for it,” Swisher said.
“This industry has managed to get by at a time when our politics are so divided, but they have further divided our politics and taken advantage of that division,” she added.
The European Commission has been more proactive, with the latest law enacted last month, called the Digital Services Act, aimed at preventing the spread of harmful activities and disinformation online. Swisher welcomed Margrethe Vestager, the commission's antitrust chief, to his podcast this weekend. “The very simple logic is that what is considered illegal offline should be considered and treated as illegal online as well,” Vestager told her.
Swisher concludes Burn Book with a chapter on artificial intelligence, or AI, the current “next big thing” in technology that is sucking up tons of capital and talent and generating huge valuations and growth. She grapples with uncertainty about the impact of AI, embodied in the eternal but sensational question of whether AI will kill us.
She told the audience in Minneapolis that, just as in the early days of the Internet era, the AI industry is shrouded in great promise and hype.
“Any technology is a weapon and a tool,” she says. “History shows that bad people want to use it as a weapon.”
