Cyberselfish Returns as Paulina Borsook Revives Her Silicon Valley Warning
Tin House revives Paulina Borsook's 2000 book Cyberselfish, renewing her warning that anti-regulation ideology still shapes Silicon Valley and AI today.
Summary
Tin House is reissuing Paulina Borsook’s Cyberselfish, her out-of-print 2000 examination of techno-libertarianism, unchanged except for introductions by Borsook and Nerd Reich author Gil Durán. Used copies had sold for about $3, but prices and interest rose roughly 18 months ago as European academics and unfamiliar social media users rediscovered it. Durán’s Bluesky campaign and podcast appearance with Borsook helped make copies scarce.
Borsook began observing Bay Area technology circles in the mid-1980s and identified an anti-regulation culture in the early 1990s that ignored government’s role in research, infrastructure and environmental protection. She traces its expansion to the Netscape IPO, finance-driven dot-com culture and later companies including Airbnb and Uber. Her original divide between George Gilder-inspired social conservatives and John Perry Barlow-style cultural liberals persists, she argues, among Christian nationalists, conservative Catholics, Burning Man communities, effective altruists and AI leaders.
Borsook calls AI a stock-driven Ponzi scheme and sees continuity between early libertarian rhetoric, technology executives aligned with the Trump administration and workers who stay because employment is precarious. She cites Sergey Brin’s criticism of California, Elon Musk’s reluctant employees and Apple’s instrument-crushing advertisement as examples of disconnection or cultural decline. AI and military projects now absorb investment, while government, nonprofits and bootstrapped businesses offer fewer clear paths for dissenting young engineers. Reform remains possible if corporate interests change, or if appropriate-technology teams leave hyperscalers and form independent ventures.
Positives
- Tin House is restoring Cyberselfish to print after roughly 18 months of rising academic, social media and resale interest.
- Gil Durán contributed a new introduction and used Bluesky and his podcast to rally support for the book’s return.
- European academics independently contacted Paulina Borsook as previously overlooked arguments gained renewed attention.
- The original 2000 text remains unchanged, preserving it as a record of Silicon Valley culture before today’s AI boom.
- Independent appropriate-technology ventures could offer engineers alternatives if teams can secure funding or spin out from hyperscalers.
Risks & concerns
- AI is absorbing most available investment outside military projects, leaving young engineers fewer routes into unrelated technology work.
- Borsook says Silicon Valley’s anti-regulation ideology discounts government-funded research, infrastructure and environmental protection that enabled the industry.
- Airbnb and Uber exemplify finance-driven businesses using technological rhetoric while resisting regulation and creating community harms, in Borsook’s assessment.
- Employment precarity can keep workers inside companies led by executives whose political beliefs they reject.
- Government, nonprofit and bootstrapped technology careers appear less viable, leaving reform-minded computer science and engineering graduates limited options.
- Borsook considers AI a stock-driven Ponzi scheme whose leaders repeat older claims of exceptionalism and freedom from oversight.