"Some of those who believe tech lost its way are finding explanations in a book published a quarter century ago," according to David Streitfeld's full-page profile of "Cyberselfish" author Paulina Borsook in The New York Times ("A Book That Criticized Silicon Valley Gets Dusted Off," Nov. 30). To those who recall the turn-of-the-millennium Internet, Borsook's is the exemplar of what Star Wars sage Obi-Wan Kenobi called "a name I've not heard in a long time."
The 2000 tome warned readers for whom "it's easy to sit at your computer and imagine yourself the Han Solo captain of your destiny" that "the era of the solo programmer making an impact is mostly long over" (the year that one created the formative video game Counter-Strike, as noted in a Times retrospective on Dec. 1). Earthbound free spirits would have to settle for something sounding more like a real-life version of a "Family Ties" rerun, the spirit of the Sixties generation confined to "more comfort with a broader range of psychoactive substance use" alongside Eighties enthusiasms entrenched: "Deregulate this! Phooey on government!"
For all their reliance on corporate welfare, according to Borsook, "technolibertarians typically can't be bothered to engage in conventional political maneuvers." The 2001 paperback edition envisioned such an ideology dominating the computer industry "long after high tech has retreated to being just one industrial sector among many."
Murray Rothbard rates a mention in "Cyberselfish" as exemplifying libertarianism at its most uncompromising, but he looked to the history of the American economy not as a model for a "cruelly meritocratic world-to-come" but for evidence that its productive potential had been persistently prevented.
