Paulina Borsook was a journalist covering Northern California tech culture since the 1980s. In 2000, she produced Cyberselfish, a sharply written critique of that culture, a book that has this year been reprinted and wow, what a piece of work, because Borsook was way, way ahead of her time.
Borsook tears into a culture that is hugely libertarian and male and marked by characteristics that will seem familiar to current readers.
She writes about a culture of technolibertarians who are wildly self-important, convinced that they are doing super-important work and therefor should be A) revered by the common herd that is so beneath them and B) unhampered by any sort of regulation and restriction. She writes that
the myth of the solo entrepreneur is embedded deep in the Silicon Valley psyche, a myth only partially grounded in reality. And like many myths, this one ignores the larger culture it springs from. The (male) alone-on-his-search-to-earn-his-manhood isn't exactly how it really works.
This culture comes with many less-than-awesome features, like "high tech's curious nyah-nyah-nyah-I've-got-mine-so-screw-you orientation to the world." That and a belief that "the market will prevail" and so regulations are neither necessary nor desirable.
So much of this is recognizable from the world of early-21st-century ed reform-- a school should be run by a visionary CEO who is unhampered by rules and regulations (unnecessary because the market will decide whether he has succeeded or not).
There is of course also a faith in computers themselves. At one point, Borsook points out that because computers change so quickly, and white and blue work uses computers, therefor those jobs must also change quickly and the enterprises and industries they are part of must also change. (See also: every reformster argument that education has to change radically Right Now.) She also connects this to a techno "joy of obsolescence."
Borsook also describes how these technotitans feel put upon and victimized, demanding freedom from any sort of intervention as well as a less-explicit insistence that folks recognize that these tech overlords really ought to be revered and in charge. So powerful, and yet so brittle.
But why is this group, so privileged, so poised for flight in any direction-- to get a well-compensated job, to hire top-drawer lawyers, to live in horse country or exurbia away from urban unrest, to shelter assets, to flee-- so flipped about the possibility of being messed with?
She writes about techno philanthropy's discomfort with "squishy stuff and the intangibles that can't be reduced to formulae or program,' and its disinterest in the care of people "who do not represent problems to be solved."
Techno dollars do, she notes, go to K-12 education. The cynical motivation, she notes, would be the idea that "you gotta catch 'em/brainwash them when they're young-- or they won't be good workers in their cubicles, won't be good purchasers of your latest rev (that is, version of software), won't have formed the strong brand loyalty you want them to have." These tech folks also imagined knowledge as simple retrieval of data.
They had other education ideas, too. Kim Polese, a then-CEO of software company Marimba, proposed at an Al Gore-hosted confab, a piece of vaporware called Dashboard. Dashboard would allow parents to log on to their tv to get the latest stats on their child's performance and even send notes to the teacher. That particular program did not materialize, but the general concept has certainly done well since.
At times it's stunning what Borsook spotted in the late 1990s. She reports a 1994 presentation that presaged AI agents and tech overlords who envisioned a "happy land of a world serviced by agents and amused by content freed from dependency on" other human's ideas, a land of "a land of individuals isolated from the need for contact with other human beings and, relievedly, no longer reliant upon them."
Anachronisms crop up at times. She mentions Sports Illustrated as a publication "thriving" when cut loose from its parent corporation. Yahoo is a new startup. And social media is nowhere in sight.
I've just scratched the surface here. The book provides a clear and sharply observed of tech overlord culture that is in many ways sharper and clearer than most observers right now. It's a worthwhile read and really brings into focus some of the culture and attitudes that we are dealing with right now (and her writing brings lots of bright-edged sass). I recommend grabbing a copy. I'll leave you with this clip from her closing argument.
I don't believe that a culture that presents itself as being the One True Way of the future, but which in so many ways embodies the worst of the past-- where human values and, ultimately, people, count for less than machines-- is one that is cause for rejoicing.
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