Paulina Borsook’s “Cyberselfish” is coming back into print. The book, first published in 2000, will return in a new edition from Tin House, with a new introduction by “Nerd Reich” author Gil Durán. The reissue follows renewed attention to the book: The New York Times reported last fall that “Cyberselfish” was attracting new readers seeking to understand why the tech industry “lost its way,” and Durán had earlier argued that it was time to revive Borsook’s career, saying she had seen the problems clearly and tried to warn people 25 years ago.
In a Zoom interview, Borsook described the book as almost a travelogue of her effort to understand the techno-libertarian strain in Silicon Valley culture. She characterized that worldview as a set of beliefs she considers roughly 12 years old in its outlook, sharply opposed to regulation even though, in her view, no sector of society had benefited more from government and suffered less. That attitude, she said, persisted and spread even after the dot-com crash.
Borsook traced her interest to the early and mid-1980s, when she began moving through Bay Area tech circles, and to the early 1990s, when she started hearing remarks she found baffling. She grew up in Pasadena, home of the Caltech-JPL space program, and said the STEM culture she knew there had a clear understanding of what government could do for it. She contrasted that with the self-regard she encountered in Silicon Valley, and said her agent, after her MFA at Columbia, encouraged her to pursue nonfiction, which led her to explore the subculture.
Borsook said most writing about the industry in the 1990s was celebratory rather than questioning, and that while others recognized a libertarian streak in Silicon Valley, no one had pulled it out and examined it closely. She drew a distinction in the book between Ravers, culturally liberal figures she named in homage to John Perry Barlow, and Gilders, social conservatives she named after George Gilder. She said that divide still holds, citing Christian nationalists and conservative Catholics in leadership alongside Burners and people experimenting with sexuality and drugs in the effective altruist and AI worlds.
Borsook said she has not published a second book and that after “Cyberselfish” first appeared, no one was interested in anything she might say about tech or anything else. Last year, she noticed used copies of the book rising in price, unexpected social media posts from strangers praising its importance, and inquiries from European academics, which led to more press coverage and the Tin House edition.
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