Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech

Customer Reviews

Forget the title of the book: the writing is appalling.

Very disappointing

Funny and true to heart.

...

Richard Threadgill 2002-10-09

16 of 27 people found the following review helpful:

Cyberselfish subtitles itself "A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech." Unfortunately, when the author said "a critical look," she seem's to have meant 'a disapproving view' rather than 'an insightful and reasoned examination.' The entire work reads like a pure net rant, unfortunately for the most part without the wit of actual quality scholarship or clever repartee. I wish it had at least been labeled as fiction, so my expectations would have been lower.

Some of her more egregious failings:

o Regularly ... up the time order of events. The author routinely attributes as causes events that happened well after the events they were supposed to have caused.
o Bad research; for example, she quotes an excerpt from the Saxenian book mentioned above, but she misrepresents both the thesis of that work and the excerpt she quotes!
o Mistaking carpetbaggers for thought leaders - In numerous cases, she holds up recent hangers-on to the technology boom as being core cultural icons, respected and revered by all. Never mind that the culture and industry she documents is decades old, and the hangers-on she quotes only fell in love with us poor maladjusted nerds five years ago when the money really started hotting up.
o Repeatedly misrepresenting her targets disagreements with her as an example of them not having considered the issues she raises. The author seems to be frankly unable to comprehend that someone might consider the many social and governmental issues she holds near and dear but honestly come to different (or even conflicting!) conclusions. ...

I picked up the work expecting to find a reasoned treatise on why the computing industry needs to be more socially responsible; instead, I got 270 pages of poorly reasoned vitriol that rarely presents a coherent argument; rather than pointing to real shortcomings of the technology industry, the author wallows in anecdote, apparently assuming that a sympathetic reader who agrees with her thesis won't actually notice that the evidence she presents doesn't actually support her conclusions.

...

Probably amusing if you already agree...

PublicAffairs

Paulina Borsook

28 reviews

release date: 2001-06

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Product Description

This enormously controversial take on high tech culture "combines common sense with an old-fashioned humanism to make sense of the current high-tech gestalt. " -Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times. Paulina Borsook has been stirring up a ruckus in Silicon Valley since her days as a regular contributor to Wired magazine. She ruffled feathers again with Cyberselfish, a spirited, funny, gimlet-eyed look at the worldview of the digerati-one she terms "violently lacking in compassion, ravingly anti-government, and tremendously opposed to regulation. " PublicAffairs' new trade paperback edition is updated throughout, and includes a new afterword by the author addressing the cat calls, jeers, and cries of "foul" from the world of high tech that greeted the hardcover. In Cyberselfish Borsook journeys through and rants about high tech culture, profiling the worlds of ravers, gilders, cypherpunks, anarchocapitalists, and other Silicon Valley life forms; and exploring the theory and practice of what she dubs "technolibertarianism" in all its manifestations. Whether she is attending Bionomics conferences or hanging out with Wired staffers, reading personal ads or evaluating high-tech's sorry philanthropic record, 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 raises the hackles of high techies and clarifies what makes the rest of us so nervous about the brave new cyberworld.

Amazon.com Review

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