This 2000 interview with Paula Borsook (Cyberselfish) perfectly sums up/predicts everything that's happened with Silicon Valley in the past quarter century. www.salon.com/2000/05/04/b...
![So now, when we talk about high-tech culture, a lot of what we're talking about is really business-speculation culture, and a transplanted Midtown Manhattan advertising culture, or Wall Street financial culture. So, though we may use the words "high tech" these days to refer to this group, they're not all the same kind of person -- but they are finding lots of common ground.
Absolutely. I noticed that at some point in the mid-'90s, we got major culture-creep, when programmers and systems administrators all became covert stock traders on the Web.
Yes. It's horrifying. [laughs] Because -- and I'm not anti-technology or anti-geek -- what is really best about these people is what I call their "curious child" quality -- scientists have it -- that kind of noodling around with code, and zoning out for 36 hours at a time working on something. That's where the really good creative work can happen. But if you have one corner of your monitor that's constantly watching the stock market, or you'r](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:psqralexigiufgtswkszy6zr/bafkreic2klxsqffbku7jdvewrbjm2ulosrtfpy5mczn7nwm4z6nqvclrxa@jpeg)
Holy hell. What a genius!
My god that 100% absolutely nails it! The amalgam of those two cultures and our worship of that monstrosity is exactly what is going on right now.
Good friend had a tech company. In order to get an IPO they had to bring in money people so the backers felt secure with their investments. First thing the money people did was have the founders fire everyone and replace them with their yes men. Creation stifles/dies like this.
In 2000!
was introduced through dale carrico to the right-wing libertarian ideological bent of silicon valley in 2012, fascinating to see someone called it all the way in the 90s ("californian ideology" notwithstanding)
Oof. Brutally spot on.
Oh wow that is spot-on
I still have her book CYBERSECURITY (for which I'd guess without checking that the Salon piece is excerpted from) and as you suggest it still hasn't been superseded .
Cyberselfish! That book is a great read.