Amazon.com: Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech: Paulina Borsook: Books

Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (Hardcover)

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Are nerds playing into the hands of the corporate elite? Commentator Paulina Borsook examines the politically and philosophically libertarian world of high-tech culture in Cyberselfish and finds it wanting a soul.

Formerly a writer for Wired, Borsook made a career out of alienating the technology priests and worshippers just enough to keep them reading. Now she is free to go whole hog and say exactly what she thinks--and the techies in San Jose won't be happy. Her leftist-liberal slant helps her see the "me me me" attitudes behind the anti-government, pro-freedom rhetoric spouted reflexively by so many programmers and suits in Silicon Valley and its virtual suburbs.

Unfortunately, that same slant keeps her from respecting that many techies hold these beliefs following years of struggle and thought--and prevents her from understanding that many libertarians are as much or even more sympathetic with liberals than with conservatives. Still, her insights far outweigh her biases, and Cyberselfish is a fascinating take on the Weltanschauung of mid-90s cutting-edge capitalists.

It seems unlikely that Borsook's dark visions of a heartlessly anarchic free market, populated by self-indulgent code millionaires presiding over the long- suffering masses, will materialize on schedule--but her predictions do make for thought-provoking reading while we wait to find out. --Rob Lightner

From Publishers Weekly
A generation older and a gender apart from most whiz kids with stock options, Borsook, a former contributing editor at Wired, has a good vantage point from which to anatomize "high-tech's default political culture of libertarianism." Her examination of Wired's early years shows a party line lauding technology and libertarianismAwhile the industry is actually full of "technolumpen" and "free agents" who rarely receive medical or retirement benefits from the companies for which they work. She criticizes the philanthropic aversion of many industry magnates, who disdain the messy, nonquantifiable nature of human service charities. The emerging moguls she met favored bionomics, a Darwinian view of economic competition that manages to ignore the necessary role of government (which invented the Internet, she reminds us). Meanwhile, the "cypherpunk" privacy advocates she meets refuse to acknowledge countervailing government interest, maintaining "an angry adolescent's view of all authority as the Pig Parent." The private sector, she warns, can't support fundamental research the way the government can. In her view, the people who tell her that "government interferes too much in our lives" suffer from a selective view of history. Her analysis focuses on the mid-1990s rather than the presentAand on Silicon Valley rather than SeattleAwhich detracts somewhat from her message (e.g., Wired has turned some corners, and Bill Gates has given away billions). Still, her critique serves as a welcome corrective to the gung-ho chronicles of the new economy. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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