Cyberselfish

In 2000, Google’s motto was “Don’t be evil.” In 2018, with the company valued at $766 billion, the phrase was officially scrubbed from their code of conduct. During that time, optimism about the future and the open internet gave way to defeatism in the face of social-media siloing, subscription models, and algorithmic capture of our inner lives, as a new breed of political ideology swept the halls of power and heralded tech’s colonisation of our political horizons: technolibertarianism. Back by popular demand after more than two decades underground, Paulina Borksook’s Cyberselfish is the founding document for countercultural criticism of Silicon Valley’s power and its abuses. At once personal and political, Borsook’s writing is a travelogue through an ideological landscape where the free market is going to liberate us all (except the poor, who will need to be housed in factory cities), information wants to be free (to those who can afford it), and private enterprise is the way of the future (as long as the public are footing the bill).