The Cyberselfish Revival Demonstrates Ongoing Misunderstanding of Libertarianism

In the 1990s, Paulina Borsook contributed to Wired magazine and grew concerned about the spread of libertarian ideals within tech industry culture. In her 2000 book, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech, she warned that the tech worlds significant influence and financial power would shape society in the coming years.

Recently, The New York Times reported a renewed interest in her work, noting that used physical copies of Cyberselfish are now unusually scarce for a book only 25 years old. Borsook herself told the Nerd Reich podcast that this surge in attention has emptied the second-hand market. The book remains freely accessible online, illustrating one of the benefits of widespread digital access to information in the age of Big Tech.

Borsooks criticisms of modern tech, as echoed in the podcast and the Times article, focus on cultural and ethical concerns: the diminishing value of empathy, the normalization of surveillance capitalism, and the overlooked environmental costs of AI. She also objects to extreme wealth concentration among tech leaders and the perceived hypocrisy of critiquing government while benefiting from publicly funded infrastructure.

However, her analysis of libertarianism is often superficial. She frequently misinterprets or overlooks the philosophical and historical foundations of the ideology. For example, her portrayal of engineers gravitating toward libertarianism due to a desire to fix things misunderstands the libertarian principle of spontaneous order, which is fundamentally different from an engineers pursuit of deterministic solutions. Key libertarian concepts, such as the state as a source of coercion and the reliance on voluntary cooperation to sustain society, are largely absent from her critique.

Many of Borsooks complaints about Big Techaside from her moral critique of libertarian valuesare not actually tied to libertarian thought. On the Nerd Reich podcast, issues labeled as tech fascism highlight concerns about corporate behavior rather than ideological dominance. While some tech leaders support for controversial political figures is troubling, it often reflects strategic business considerations rather than true ideological alignment.

Her early warnings about techs societal impact were accurate but not unique; observers such as John Perry Barlow and Wireds founding editor Louis Rossetto had already explored similar concerns. While she anticipated public unease with tech figures decades in advance, her arguments largely reiterate a widespread anti-libertarian sentiment, often based on misunderstandings of the ideology.

The renewed interest in Cyberselfish demonstrates that misconceptions about libertarianism remain prevalent. The resurgence may reflect more about persistent cultural misunderstandings than any groundbreaking insight from Borsooks work.

Author: Grace Ellison