SILICON VALLEY--
Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech, by Paulina Borsook
© 2000 PublicAffairs. ISBN: 1891620789, 256 pages
I heard about Cyberselfish
when driving around Vermont Memorial Day weekend from used bookstore
to used bookstore. The NPR station was broadcasting an interview with
Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, a writer who worked for Wired during its glory years. I
was put off by the book's wretched title, but engrossed by the
subject: the powerful undercurrent of libertarianism that flows
through high-tech circles. I have been astounded but not amazed at the
deeply adolescent and peevish libertarian attitudes that so many
techies cling to, from gun worship to fear of governmental Internet
regulation. Listening to Borsook speak intelligently and cogently
about technolibertarianism made me want her book very much.
This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled
with the title (which comes from an eponymous
essay for Mother Jones
she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so
cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat
thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and
wit; for a random example, "Polyamory
is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy
and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner
choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and
informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the
book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been
cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading
some multivolume series straight through, in which the characters and
history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.
Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism
in depth: Bionomics,
cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of
philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful,
posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good
aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she
thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and
descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is
scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the
personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while
she examines those of others.
Bionomics: From Darwin to Cato
To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is
the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to
describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics:
Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute
(TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical
observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to
economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the
most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the
best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're
useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for
the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's
beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses
metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be
powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional
appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.
After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were
(literally) taken over by the Cato
Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The
annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was
the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes
ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into
software-startup Maxager, which
intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what
meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the
company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good
enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause
the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it
validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with
Silicon Valley venture capitalists?
Burning Man to Halloween
The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply
describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the
neo-hippie polyandric Burning
Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in
entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.
One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the
Halloween Document,
written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly
have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil
Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an
entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like
discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both
acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."
As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and
nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who
agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble.
Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it
raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians
celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the
collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?
I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as
they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate,
opinionated, and conversational style. Opposing idealogues will latch
to the flaws and believe Borsook is deluded. Left-wing idealogues will
cheer this book. The rest of us will simply read an enjoyably intelligent
and personal look at our society and the popular myths of the times.
--Adam Brate, Sociotech Correspondent
July 9, 2000
