Cyberselfish

A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech

In Cyberselfish, Borsook journeys through and rants about high tech culture, profiling the worlds of ravers, gilders, cypherpunks, anarcho-capitalists, and other Silicon Valley life forms, and exploring the theory and practice of technolibertarianism in all its manifestations. She visits the Bionomics Institute, a libertarian thinktank, to explore how its para/pseudo/crypto “biological” thinking pervades high tech discourse on technology, economics, and life. She journeys to the front lines of the “crypto wars” to explain why cryptography has been such an important issue to both the U.S. government and the high tech community. She deconstructs Wired, the magazine that defined an era, and shows how many high tech thought leaders have at least one foot in the philosophies and misogyny of days long gone by. She also investigates the perplexing dilemma of philanthropy in high tech, exposing how little of the billions generated in the new economy filters into our culture at large, and defining what she calls the “cat-dead-rat” phenomenon, whereby high tech give unto the world the thing it loves, not necessarily what the world wants or needs. Finally, she examines the factors that have led to technolibertarianism, and wonders aloud about the extent to which high tech’s creativity and energy and money and contributions to our general welfare are undermined by its self-centered politically myopic worldview.

Whether she is parsing Silicon Valley personal ads, hanging out with high tech gurus, attending conferences-cum-rallies or exposing the flaws in technolibertarian thinking, Borsook is full of original observations, mordant wit, and furious passion that readers wake up to the social and political consequences of having computer geeks run the world. Cyberselfish is sure to raise the hackles of high techies and to clarify what makes the rest of us so nervous about the brave new cyberworld.