The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/11/27/technology/writer-silicon-valley-criticism.html

https://archive.ph/74rSu

The Writer Who Dared Criticize Silicon Valley
Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish,” which offered dire predictions about the tech world’s love for libertarianism, is finding fans. It only took 25 years.
By David Streitfeld
Nov. 27, 2025 Updated 8:10 a.m. ET

Even Silicon Valley dislikes Silicon Valley.

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.

Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish” saw the seeds of disaster in the late-1990s dot-com boom, which, she argued, transformed a community that was previously sober, civic-minded and egalitarian into something toxic.

Silicon Valley, Ms. Borsook wrote, hated governments, rules and regulations. It believed if you were rich, you were smart. It thought people could be, and indeed should be, programmed just like a computer. “Techno-libertarianism,” as she labeled it, had no time for the messy realities of being human.

...

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------