Best Of: Dave Eggers Created the Google-Amazon Mash-Up of Your Nightmares
Tech stocks may be under pressure, but the tentacles of Silicon Valley continue to grow, inching us closer to the dystopian world Dave Eggers paints in “The Every.” The novel imagines a world where the fictional equivalent of Google and Amazon merge to form an all-knowing corporate juggernaut that can program our every moment. Kara is revisiting her conversation with Eggers, which was taped in September. In this conversation, which first aired in September, Kara and Eggers discuss the inspiration behind his latest Silicon Valley satire. They dig into Eggers’s tech skepticism — the author says he still uses a flip phone. They also discuss the challenges that Amazon’s rapidly growing market share poses for smaller publishing houses like Eggers’s own company, McSweeney’s. Kara will be back on Thursday with a new episode. You can find transcripts (posted midday) and more information for all episodes at nytimes.com/sway, and you can find Kara on Twitter @karaswisher.