ANNOTATION

Cyberselfish, a spirited, funny, gimlet-eyed look at the worldview of the digerati￯﾿ﾽone 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.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

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."
￯﾿ﾽMichiko 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￯﾿ﾽone 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.

FROM THE CRITICS

Michiko Kakutani

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.

Seattle Weekly

Cuts through the usual techie propaganda.￯﾿ﾽ Cyberselfish is a fabulous read.

Christian Science Monitor

A savvy, critical look at the attitudes and beliefs of the digerati.

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 libertarianism--while 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 present--and on Silicon Valley rather than Seattle--which 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 Cahners Business Information.|

Booknews

Borsook, who was long a contributor to magazine and writes widely on technology and culture, looks at the culture of the people behind the cyber age. Finding techies to be violently lacking in compassion, ravingly anti-government, and tremendously opposed to regulation, she wonders how they and their relentless pursuit of personal goals will impact the larger society over the next decades. She does not include bibliographic references. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com) Read all 8 "From The Critics" >

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