How are women doing in the power structures of Silicon Valley? WIRED sums it up in two words: in a word: shaky. That is the premise of the next WIRED@Night event, a live-audience recording of the Uncanny Valley podcast co-presented with KQED and scheduled for Thursday, October 8, 2026 at The Commons at KQED in San Francisco.
The evening is a spin-off of a larger editorial project. In fall 2026 WIRED is producing a special issue devoted to gender and power, and the live show is meant to dig further into what the magazine calls a fascinating and nuanced state of affairs.
The headliner: a returning skeptic
The night opens with a conversation between Paulina Borsook, tech journalist and former WIRED writer, and Katie Drummond, WIRED’s global editorial director. Borsook is the author of Cyberselfish, a book first published in 2000 that took aim at the libertarian streak running through high-tech culture. Her long-standing skepticism toward the industry may have worked against her during decades when growth-at-all-costs thinking ruled the Valley, but the book has aged into something close to prophecy.
That is why it is coming back. Tin House, an imprint of Zando, is reissuing Cyberselfish with a foreword by Gil Durán of The Nerd Reich. Penguin Random House lists the paperback on sale September 15, 2026 at $18.00, with 336 pages. Durán’s foreword calls the book “a work of prophecy” whose warning “was largely ignored at the time.” On stage, Borsook and Drummond are set to talk about WIRED then and now, and about what Borsook makes of the current trillionaire class.
The panel: hunting for Silicon Valley’s most powerful woman
The second half turns into a full podcast taping. The Uncanny Valley panel, executive editor Brian Barrett and contributing editor Zoë Schiffer, will bring on WIRED senior correspondent Lauren Goode to discuss her quest to find the most powerful woman in Silicon Valley. It is a deceptively simple question that touches on boardrooms, funding, founders and who actually gets to steer the industry’s biggest decisions.
Event details
- Event: WIRED’s Uncanny Valley, feat. Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, co-presented with KQED
- Date: Thursday, October 8, 2026
- Time: 7 PM, doors at 6:30 PM
- Venue: The Commons at KQED, San Francisco
- Tickets: General Admission $25, or $15 for WIRED readers
- Discount: subscribers save $10 per ticket with the code “WIRED” at checkout
For anyone following the growing political and cultural clout of Big Tech, the pairing is a neat one: a writer who flagged the industry’s blind spots a quarter century ago, sharing a bill with a newsroom trying to map where power sits in 2026. WIRED also offers a sign-up for updates on future events for those who cannot make it to San Francisco.
