A profile of Paulina Borsook, as her 2000 book Cyberselfish, warning about Silicon Valley's love for “techno-libertarianism”, finds a resurgence in interest
Even Silicon Valley dislikes Silicon Valley. — More than two-thirds of residents agreed in a 2024 poll … Bluesky: @omgchronicles and @gshans . Mastodon: @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org . Forums: r/technology Bluesky: Vicki Larson / @omgchronicles : “If empathy has become a distasteful personal failing; if surveillance capitalism has become the default shrugged-off business practice; if the environmental impacts of A.I. are waved away then we are living in the tech-driven culture I saw headed our way 30 yrs ago.” — www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/t... Gautam Hans / @gshans : “Modern dentistry is great. But your dentist doesn't insist you worship him.” www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/t... Mastodon: Miguel Afonso Caetano / @remixtures@tldr.nettime.org : “More than two-thirds of residents agreed in a 2024 poll that the tech companies have partially or completely misplaced their moral compass. And that was before so many in tech embraced the Trump administration. — Some of those who believe tech lost its way are finding explanations in a book published a quarter century ago. … Forums: r/technology : The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley (Gift Article)
Context & Ripple Effects
The renewed attention gives critics a contemporary vocabulary for concerns that predate the current AI-focused turn. It lands as Silicon Valley has moved into a more serious, AI-dominated “hard tech” era, while a poll cited in the story indicates broad local concern over companies’ moral direction.
The book’s argument also joins an existing debate over whether tech’s power reflects innovation alone or regulatory and labor advantages, as explored in earlier critiques of Big Tech’s rise. Recent coverage of tech leaders’ alignment with Trump makes the political dimension of that critique newly salient.
First-order effects
- Borsook and critics of the industry gain a revived reference point for linking techno-libertarian ideas to concerns about empathy, surveillance and environmental costs.
- The attention puts Silicon Valley’s self-image under sharper cultural scrutiny at a moment when many residents already question companies’ moral compass.
Second-order effects
- The revival may broaden debate from particular AI products or political endorsements to the values that shape company decision-making and public legitimacy.
- It gives journalists, employees and critics a shared historical frame for connecting current power and governance disputes to longer-running arguments about regulation and worker treatment.
Third-order effects
- If this critique continues to resonate, the industry’s political culture—not only its products—could become a more persistent object of reputational and policy scrutiny.
- The durable shift would be from treating Silicon Valley’s ideology as background culture to treating it as a factor in how the sector allocates power, accepts oversight and defines social responsibility.
The trend: Silicon Valley’s AI-era expansion is renewing scrutiny of the political and moral assumptions embedded in the industry’s model of innovation.