Key takeaways
- Paulina Borsook's Cyberselfish, out of print for 25 years, returns with renewed relevance as her 2000 critique of Silicon Valley's techno-libertarianism proves prescient about the industry's resistance to regulation.
- Borsook argues the tech industry remains divided between Ravers (culturally liberal) and Gilders (social conservatives), unified by skepticism of regulation despite depending heavily on government-funded research.
- From Airbnb's housing market disruption to AI hype, Borsook sees continuity in Silicon Valley's libertarian ideology beginning with the post-Netscape IPO influx of finance-focused capital.
- The book's revival was sparked by rising used book prices and Gil Durán's social media advocacy after connecting with Borsook and promoting her work on Bluesky.
Paulina Borsook’s 2000 critique of Silicon Valley’s ideology has found unexpected relevance 25 years after publication. The book Cyberselfish, which went out of print years ago, is returning in a new edition from Tin House with an introduction by Gil Durán, author of Nerd Reich. The resurgence reflects renewed interest in understanding how the tech industry’s techno-libertarian ideology shaped Silicon Valley and continues to influence it today.
The Book’s Origins
Borsook describes Cyberselfish as a travelogue of her attempts to understand Silicon Valley’s “techno-libertarian influence” on tech culture. Rather than a traditional polemic, she presented observations from years spent moving through tech circles beginning in the early-middle 1980s in the Bay Area. The book emerged almost accidentally when her agent, after she completed an MFA from Columbia, challenged her to develop nonfiction ideas. She offered to explore a “weird subculture” that confused her, and that impulse drove her into research and writing about Silicon Valley’s ideological underpinnings.
Her background shaped her perspective. Borsook grew up in Pasadena near Caltech and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, surrounded by engineers and scientists who understood government’s central role in enabling their work and lacked the self-congratulatory posturing she encountered in early Silicon Valley. Starting around the early 1990s, she heard what she called “very weird, offhand remarks” from tech people espousing libertarian philosophy that puzzled her.
Defining the Ideology
In the book, Borsook identified a “basket of beliefs” fundamentally hostile to regulation. This philosophy wrongly applied biological thinking to society, assuming that if institutions simply evolved without external constraint, outcomes would be positive. The stance ignored a central fact: no sector of American society has benefited more from government support while complaining more about government interference than technology.
The Contradiction at Its Core
Borsook points to concrete examples of this disconnect. Tech executives fleeing California for Nevada to escape state taxes demonstrated the inability to connect cause and effect. Sergey Brin claimed California was “turning into Soviet Russia,” yet these people benefit from decades of government environmental regulation and intervention that maintains Lake Tahoe’s water quality. The sector built itself on government-funded research and development, yet espoused virulent anti-regulation stances.
Ravers and Gilders
Borsook distinguished between two Silicon Valley factions within leadership: “Gilders” and “Ravers.” Gilders were named after George Gilder, the conservative thought leader of the early 1990s, and represented socially conservative leadership. Ravers, named for John Perry Barlow, represented culturally liberal elements interested in Burning Man, drug and sexual experimentation, and effective altruism. This distinction held up over time. Contemporary Silicon Valley still housed both groups: Christian nationalists and conservative Catholics in leadership positions alongside Burners, effective altruists, and AI researchers, united less by coherent politics than by skepticism of external regulation.
Continuity and Evolution
When asked whether current tech industry alignment with right-wing politics represents a fundamental shift or continuity with her 2000 observations, Borsook sees mostly continuity. She marks the Netscape IPO as the turning point when “finance bros” arrived and altered Silicon Valley’s character, introducing a mentality that prioritized “flip and flee” profits over long-term community benefit. That attitude persisted even after the dot-com crash, “percolating around, contaminating the aquifers,” as she put it, spreading more widely over time.
Financial Plays Disguised as Innovation
Companies like Airbnb and Uber exemplify the pattern. Borsook categorizes them not as technology innovations but as financial plays enabled by excess investment capital. Both replicated the libertarian language and anti-regulation stance she documented in 2000. Airbnb’s resistance to regulation or accountability toward communities it fundamentally altered through housing supply disruption embodied exactly the ideology Borsook warned about decades earlier. The company claimed it was merely technology enabling peer-to-peer transactions, not acknowledging how it had transformed housing markets.
Employment Precarity and Compromise
Borsook acknowledges that rank-and-file employees often don’t share leadership’s ideology. Greater employment precarity means workers tolerate positions under leaders whose beliefs they reject. Many in companies run by figures like Elon Musk don’t love their leadership but feel unable to leave. This differs from earlier eras when loyalty and shared values seemed to matter more to workers, or when such ideological misalignment might have driven departures.
AI and Historical Patterns
Borsook views artificial intelligence as the latest iteration of familiar patterns. She describes AI currently as a “big Ponzi scheme,” reflecting decades of hype, regulation-avoidance, and shareholder value extraction. She points to Apple as emblematic of industry tone-deafness. The company that created the famous 1984 commercial promising liberation through technology once produced an advertisement showing musical instruments and writing crushed in a hydraulic press, failing to recognize how the industry’s own tools destroy the creative work it claims to enable.
Stockholder value theory, she argues, provides easy justification for whatever AI companies pursue regardless of social benefit. It perpetuates the same libertarian logic she identified in 2000: market forces and personal gain trump collective concerns.
The Book’s Unexpected Return
The book’s resurgence began gradually and unexpectedly. About 18 months before the new edition announcement, Borsook noticed used copies on secondary markets commanding higher prices. Previously they had sold for three dollars, low enough that shipping costs exceeded profit. Then the trajectory shifted noticeably. European academics began contacting her with questions about her work. Social media posts from people she didn’t know appeared, arguing the book should never have gone out of print and deserved renewed attention.
Gil Durán’s Role in Revival
The key catalyst came through Gil Durán. After meeting Borsook, the two recognized themselves as “kindred spirits.” When journalist Steven Levy worked on a Wired piece about how he got Silicon Valley wrong, Durán became instrumental in promoting Borsook’s work. Though Levy never directly contacted Borsook, Durán used Bluesky to champion both the book and its author, calling for the work to return to print. Following Durán’s posts and podcast appearances where he discussed her ideas, copies of Cyberselfish became nearly impossible to find, demonstrating how thoroughly digital advocacy could resurrect a forgotten text.
The new Tin House edition with Durán’s introduction signals that Borsook’s quarter-century-old observations deserve another hearing as the tech industry confronts questions about its founding ideology and its consequences.
Source: TechCrunch
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Cyberselfish go out of print, and why is it returning now?
The book went out of print after its 2000 publication, with Borsook noting that afterward no one wanted to hear from her about tech. It resurged when used copy prices began rising roughly 18 months ago, European academics contacted her, social media posts highlighted its importance, and Gil Durán championed it on Bluesky and in interviews, leading to a new Tin House edition.
What is techno-libertarianism according to Borsook?
Borsook describes it as a basket of beliefs violently opposed to regulation, resting on the flawed assumption that allowing institutions to evolve naturally without constraints produces positive outcomes. The ideology ignores that no sector has benefited more from government support while resisting regulation more than technology.
What does Borsook see as the core problem with Silicon Valley's ideology?
Borsook argues that Silicon Valley leaders benefit from decades of government-funded research, environmental regulation, and infrastructure, yet deny these benefits and resist any regulation themselves. She views this as a fundamental disconnect between the industry's dependence on government and its anti-regulation stance.
