Burn Book is that rare thing: a book about tech that can be enjoyed by readers who are not that into tech. It is a witty and engaging account of the rise (and often fall) of internet companies and the often dysfunctional talents behind them, told by an exceptionally well-connected outsider. Kara Swisher is somehow regarded as both Silicon Valley’s “most feared” and “well-liked” journalist.
Perhaps this is best encapsulated in her rollercoaster relationship with Elon Musk, whom she knew, liked and often defended, but publicly fell out with a month after his Twitter purchase was finalised, telling him , “You may be my greatest disappointment in 25 years of covering tech.” Swisher claims to be have been born in the same year as the internet: 1962 . Even as a child, “why” was her favourite word .
Her career took off at the Washington Post, where she worked from the early 1990s on internet technology. Her interest was in the Silicon Valley geeks behind it – at the time regarded as “a backwater to a backwater” – rather than politics. A much-quoted line of hers , from the early 1990s , is that “everything that can be digitised will be digitised”.
This epiphany changed her career. Review: Burn Book: A Tech Love Story – Kara Swisher (Piatkus) Swisher became riveted by the succession of “total domination followed by utter collapse” of various technologies – from CD-ROMs to Myspace – and the never-were businesses that just burned through investors.