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Selfish Society
In Borsook's Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through The Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech, published by Public Affairs, Borsook takes aim at the Social Darwinism of the tech culture, at its lack of empathy for human beings -- especially the technologically primitive and impaired. In this world she finds much hostility and paranoia, a world of "testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders and too much time on their hands." Ouch.
She has a point, and it's hard to write for Slashdot and not wince at the above description. This is a narcissistic civilization with a mean streak, fat and lazy and arrogant from years of uninterrupted opportunity, innovation and peace, thriving from years of neglect by unknowing and entrenched institutions. Values and political systems are often forged in turmoil and difficulty, but people who've grown up in and around technology have seen an almost unbroken stretch of growth, innovation and prosperity. Jefferson wrote that in times of peace and prosperity, there is little need for politics. Not surprisingly, this techno-civilization has little interest in the political systems that still dominate society, so it radically underestimates their power and has an inflated sense of its own.
Having known only one reality, the young and techno-savvy can't quite imagine any other. But the political systems that dominate society have a keen interest in them, as a host of new laws, regulations and legal initiatives are already demonstrating, from the FBI's mail-sniffing program "Carnivore" to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.
As a social grouping -- despite the handful of protestors who made their way to Seattle and struggle to form public interest groups online and off -- this culture has by and large rolled over for greedy megacorporations in exchange for full employment and technological capital. That makes it a vulnerable society too, unprepared for the assaults just around the corner. "How could they take my Napster away?" as that e-mail wailed. "Who did it? Where did they come from?"
As a culture, it mistakes mechanical skills -- like programming an operating system -- with technological knowledge and power. It tolerates an alarming amount of hostility and abuse, both of which make any political communications -- at least those in public -- nearly impossible.
If it has any common ideology, it honors innovation, economics and freedom -- the freedom to speak openly and to be prosperous. In fact, prosperity and the acquisition of technology have become this society's hallmark; it doesn't really have any other principles.
The techno-young correctly grasp that many of the country's seminal institutions -- politics, journalism, education -- have failed them and the larger society. But nobody seems to have given much thought to what might replace them, or to how they might defend themselves against increasingly encroachments from the off-line world.
Since this particularly gifted society created its social revolution quite apart from politics, education, even most adults, it has no sense of history and little memory, which creates another point of vulnerability; to be ignorant of the past is to be defenseless against the future. The techno-world eschews even the most marginal understanding of the tortured history of technology, the awareness that periods of technological advancement are always followed by periods of fear and retrenchment.
From the Greeks to the the Enlightenment philosophers to Thomas Jefferson to Albert Einstein, some of the world's greatest thinkers have argued that to have knowledge is to struggle to understand the relationship between what you know and what you do. If they're right, we're in trouble. We have no common agenda. We stand for nothing. We take actions based on tiny nodes of specialized information. Granted an unprecented opportunity to speak, we have not bothered to learn how to listen. Our freedom to speak out becomes illusory when most of us are shouting into a void, because nobody really cares what we say. Meanwhile, the real social and political agendas are being set by older people with little knowledge of technology, working out of l9th century institutions corrupted by corporate money.
That leaves the average citizen -- the prime user of technology -- caught in an intolerable position, between a technological elite moving rapidly past them on the one hand, and an ignorant power structure making foolish laws and uncomprehending responses on the other. As a society, we have no means of grasping the bigger picture, the purpose being the things we do, the moral rationale for the way we live and work.
In 1159, a philosopher-noble named John of Salisbury helped revive the then- dormant notion of individualism. He challenged his society to achieve self-scrutiny and understanding. "Who," he asked, "is more contemptible than he who scorns knowledge of himself?"
It's a great question. Liberalism and conservatism have been discredited, Libertarianism seems rigid and stagnant. In fact, conventional political ideologies seem far too narrow and inflexible for these times. Individualism seemed the right idea for John of Salisbury's time, and it might be even more relevant to ours, given that it fits the Net ethos like a glove, from the hackers to the cypherpunks to the open source progrmmers. And it's the only possible antidote to life in country evolving steady towards a corporate rather than democratic republic.
Technology has become the world's most interesting and ascending social force. No ideology -- with the possible exception of corporatism -- is stronger or spreading more rapidly. The frequently idealistic generation that designed the Internet -a diverse collection of engineers, cyber-gurus, philosophers, programmers,nerds, geeks, communalists and free-thinkers -- is yielding power and influence to the inhabitants of the Second Generation Internet, the first generation to grow up with networked computing. This new techno-generation takes for granted startling realities -- the ready availability of much of the archived information and entertainment in the world.
This techno-elite, taking sophisticated knowledge of technology for granted, has lost touch with the vast numbers of people in the world -- the elderly, the poor, foreign-born -- who don't share their skills and confidence. "Anybody can get an encrypted e-mail program," JOEB7 e-mailed me last week. "Why all the whining about privacy?"
JOEB7 doesn't seem to know that the vast majority of people have never even heard of encrypted e-mail programs, let alone used them. Such people dominate the most powerful and vital subculture in the world, but have no coherent political values beyond a nearly universal contempt for the one in place.
We think the individual's primary responsibility is to speak freely and become prosperous. Neither of those are small or inconsequential things, but as a cultural or social philosophy, they ring hollow. They promote cynicism, hostility, alienation, superiority, and most of all, they leave this culture vulnerable to better organized and powerful elites -- media, Congress, corporations. This may be inevitable, but it's worrisome.
We hear political truth daily -- we are vaguely conscious of threats to privacy, the looming menace of genetic and other technologies, poorly made, unnecessary and overpriced technology, challenges to the environment, human dignity, etc. -- but don't much want to deal with them. People worried about these issues are derided -- in this techno-culture as crackpots and extremists. We either laugh at them or dismiss them.
Democracy and freedom aren't about prosperity. You can be poor and quite free. Democracy is about the legitimacy of the individual, whose voice and vote should count for more than any other single interest or group. Technology can either be the vehicle through which those voices are re-democratized, or it can provide the tools through which corporatism can generate even more money.
This is an intensely political choice -- a decision -- even if many of the people most involved have no idea they are making it every day of their lives.
This book is available at FatBrain.
Having (attempted) to work through the '89-'91 recession and having lived as a kid through the '72-'74 and '81-'83 recessions I must assume these kids just aren't prepared for the eventual economic kick in the ass.
Yes, it's true that most young technology savvy kids assume that the now (supposedly) wonderful economy is somehow dependent on their brains and success, but it isn't so. Nor will technology workers be responsible when the next recession hits, these are cyclical effects more dependent on Federal Reserve policy and exchange rates than anything else.
Yes, it's true that computers have increased efficiency for most businesses by automating much office paperwork and accounting away. But these gains in efficiency will go only so far until we hit the next wall of automation. At that point I expect to see GDP growth fall back, and possibly even a recession to hit. We're well due for one soon... GET PREPARED!
And, maybe after going through this and possibly losing your house, a marriage from the stress, or some other setback, you kids might begin to understand that those with hot skills from twenty years back are no more or less intelligent than you. That you've lived young through todays market gains is more a matter of luck than a sign of (social) evolutionary success. And maybe after you've had to care for a dying parent (and seen for yourself how poor Medicare/Medicaid is for our citizens), or stepped into a city school to meet your child's frazzled out teacher because (s)he has a class size of nearly 40 pupils, or walked along one of the many bridges which are literally crumbling from lack of repairs... maybe then you'll realize that these gains are illusion for the vast majority of American citizens.
That your skills are in demand today isn't proof they will be in demand tomorrow. That you're successful today doesn't mean lean times ahead are avoided for certain. That you're healthy today doesn't mean your health will remain (in fact, given enough time it's certain to fade). PREPARE YOURSELF AND YOUR FAMILY! And consider the many citizens of America who had to grow up with substandard education, poor health care, and dilapidated surroundings; that could be you but for circumstance.
We used to have a reasonable social safety net for those children who, by no fault of their own, grew up poor. After the Republican 80's and Demopublican '90s, we have none of that left. I voted for Clinton in '92 for one reason: National Health Coverage. With the Democrats and Republican platforms mirror images sans abortion, I simply can't vote for either party any longer. For these reasons, this year I'm voting Ralph Nader for President.
One of the reasons that tech culture seems "selfish" and "arrogant" to others is that the people that run it and work in it have worked HARD to get what they have
While I'd be the last person to disagree that IT people generally work very hard, I think you are missing the point of the article. I used to have the exact same attitude that you expressed in your post. Here is the line of thinking that I had:
Goddamn, I have been installing/compiling/scripting etc for years in my own time to learn everything I know and that's why I got a kickarse job earning decent amounts of cash - dammit - I worked hard to get the money that I do. And besides, I work real long hours etc etc
And you know what? I was exactly right - I had worked harder than most people and so in that respect I deserved the money that I was getting.
But, I was still selfish and arogant. I only found out after a friend pointed out the reason why. The reason is:
I have been lucky because my situation/family/background/financial situation enabled me to have the opportunity to use computers. Some people aren't so lucky. Some people may have been able to afford a computer but without having any guidance or inspiration, they have been shown what their potential could have achieved using computers. I originally trained to be an engineer but switched to computer science after I realised that this is what I truly liked. Some people can't afford to do this.
There are a lot of reasons why people never find out about their options when it comes to IT.
For you and me, we were fortunate that we found out or were shown these opportunities. It has nothing to do with how smart we are - sure we get brownie points for seizing the opportunity when it came by - but for a twist of fate, we could have been an unlucky one who didn't get a chance at that opportunity.
If we don't recognise this, then we deserve to be labelled selfish and arogant ... because that is what we will be
author: Pulina Borsook
publisher: PublicAffairs
ISBN: 1891620789
pages: 256
rating: 8/10
summary: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech
I heard about Cyberselfish when driving around Vermont Memorial Day weekend from used bookstore to used bookstore. The NPR station was broadcasting an interview with Cyberselfish author Paulina Borsook, a writer who worked for Wired during its glory years. I was put off by the book's wretched title, but engrossed by the subject: the powerful undercurrent of libertarianism that flows through high-tech circles. I have been astounded but not amazed at the deeply adolescent and peevish libertarian attitudes that so many techies cling to, from gun worship to fear of governmental Internet regulation. Listening to Borsook speak intelligently and cogently about technolibertarianism made me want her book very much.
This month I garnered a copy of Cyberselfish, and I'm still appalled with the title (which comes from an eponymous essay for Mother Jones she wrote in July 1996, when such cyberlanguage wasn't so cybertrite). Cyberselfish is a book-length essay, in fact a somewhat thinly edited series of linked essays. There's a rush of immediacy and wit; for a random example, "Polyamory is the preferred term of art; it's gender-neutral, where polygamy and polyandry are not, and allows for all persuasions of partner choice (gay/straight/bi/it depends)." With the freshness and informality comes flaws. There is too much repeated material in the book. It's clear that essays written at different times have been cobbled together. Reading the book straight through is like reading some multivolume series straight through, in which the characters and history are rehashed at the beginning of each book.
Cyberselfish looks at a few specific examples of technolibertarianism in depth: Bionomics, cypherpunks, Wired magazine, and Silicon Valley's impressive lack of philanthropy. Each time Borsook exposes the compassionless, fearful, posturing, politically myopic core, without dismissing the good aspects of the high-tech culture and individuals. For example, she thinks fighting for privacy rights is good, but obsessing about it and descending into rabid, paranoid ranting on alt.cypherpunks is scary. She moves smoothly from the historical to the academic to the personal, deliberately exposing her own frailities and biases while she examines those of others.
To give a deeper example of the content of Cyberselfish, Bionomics is the use of biological (and particularly Darwinian) metaphors to describe economic processes, as popularized by Michael Rothschild (Bionomics: Economy as Ecosystem) and then the The Bionomics Institute (TBI). Borsook convincingly points out through both empirical observation and reasoned analysis that Bionomics boils down to economic libertarianism, where government involvement is wrong and the most cut-throat, efficient and entrepeneurial businesses are the best. Ecological metaphors are used in Bionomics only when they're useful and sexy: The ecosystem of Hawaii was used as a metaphor for the fragility of protected industries. Under Bionomics logic, Hawaii's beautiful, lush, peaceful ecosystem is to be derided. Bionomics uses metaphors to draw syllogistic conclusions. Doing that can be powerfully convincing but amounts to hand-waving and emotional appeals. Borsook cuts through the smoke and mirrors.
After a few years, the Bionomics Institute conferences were (literally) taken over by the Cato Institute, the premier libertarian think tank in the nation. The annual Bionomics conterences began in 1993. The 1997 conference was the Cato/Bionomics Conference; 1998, the "Annual Cato Institute/Forbes ASAP Conference on Technology and Society." TBI morphed into software-startup Maxager, which intends to offer Bionomical tools to companies. Borsook wonders what meaning can be ascribed to the success or the failure of the company. If Maxager fails, is it because it wasn't Bionomically good enough, or just because of the many uncontrollable factors that cause the vast majority of startups to fail? If it succeeds, does it validate Bionomics, or just the good connections the founder has with Silicon Valley venture capitalists?
The other chapters are just as interesting. Cyberselfish sharply describes all the archetypes of the technolibertarians, from the neo-hippie polyandric Burning Man attendee to the Lexus-driving, 100-hour-a-week, plugged-in entrepeneur with a sprawling bungalow in Santa Clara county.
One of the most crystalline passages in the book describes Eric Raymond's leaking of the Halloween Document, written by Microsoft program manager Vinod Valloppillil. The two clearly have vast ideological differences, the open-source cowboy and the Evil Empire functionary, but they're both hard-core libertarians, an entirely unreported fact. In Borsook's words, "It was rather like discovering that both a liberal and a conservative senator had both acquired their law degrees from Yale: no news here."
As I said before, the book is somewhat haphazardly put together, and nearly every sentence is to some degree contentious; even someone who agrees with her basic position will find reason to quibble. Cyberselfish doesn't come near to answering all the questions it raises. Borsook doesn't really tackle the paradox that "libertarians celebrate the cult of the individual" but Open Source celebrates the collective. What does it mean to be an Open Source libertarian?
I personally think it's somewhat unfair to attack those flaws, as they're inexorably part of Cyberselfish's loose, immediate, opinionated, and conversational style. It's kind of like how Slashdot's open forums allow for a review like this and the inevitable "hot grits" responses.
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Make mine methylphenidate.
I don't know where this myth that all technologically minded people are rich came from. But I'm going to tell you that it is complete and utter bullshit.
I don't really know anybody in technology who started off rich. Why? Because the people who started off ultra rich and were handed everything throughout life do not have the motivation necessary to get anywhere in this industry.
The one thing you need to be able to make it in technology is a serious work ethic. If you have this, you will succeed. If you do not, you will fail.
The Facts:
Most of the people I know and work with in IT came from lower- to middle-class families. In fact, a large percentage came from damn near poverty. They had no money to buy computers, and used public facilities until they could scrounge enough parts dumpster diving to put together something workable. If they were lucky, they were able to find a school system giving away older systems that they could screw around with. Up until college, they were completely self taught.
The people who are making it in IT are working their asses off to do so. They are learning new things constantly. And they accept the fact that if they don't know something, they don't claim they do.
This is why so many people fail at IT, and bitch and moan about the 'technocratic elite'. As the original poster pointed out, they can't seem to fathom an industry that you cannot bullshit your way through. If all you have is some certifications you bought and no experience, and can't do jack shit, the people you work with are going to know this VERY VERY SOON. And guess what? They will (rightfully) feel that you don't belong here. Because you don't.
Not only is IT a meritocracy, it is full of people who don't care about padding criticism to make it less harsh. This is the way it works. If I think somebody doesn't know what they're doing, I tell them so, and if they know anything about the industry, THEY DON'T TAKE IT PERSONALLY. The people who fail are those who take it far too personally. I know that if I fuck something up, I am going to be told that it was my fault. You need to realize that the same holds true for everybody.
It comes down to what the original poster said: you don't know what you are doing, you can't make it in IT. The only way to know what you're doing is to WORK FOR IT. For most, this is a new concept, and one they don't want to accept. Guess what? Too bad. I don't care. Just shit, or get off the pot.
-[Blaine]- "'Oh dear,' says God, 'I hadn't thought of that,' and promptly vanishes in a puff of logic."
I'm hoping this is a troll, because it's the perfect example of the attitude the author (forget Katz) is apparently criticizing.
Are you really so narrowminded as to think that anyone who isn't technically savvy is an idiot? Do you have any idea how differently people's brains work? I know plenty of hardworking, smart, dedicated people who just don't have what it takes to be a computer wizard. That's because they're wired differently, not because they're lazy, or need to be coddled, or not valuable to society. I believe in a meritocracy to some extent, but basing it on a single set of skills would result in a society so unbalanced it would be miserable to live in and quickly self-destruct. What if your much-vaunted meritocracy were based on musical ability? Or visual artistry? Or carpentry skills? Or empathy? How would you fare if the elite decided that anyone who couldn't bang out a decent shakespearean sonnet in 30 minutes wasn't worth "coddling"?
Get a clue, and go spend some time in the real world. Meet some people who aren't computer gurus and talk with them about what they're good at before you judge them to be idiots.
Wait a minute, I misread the heading. I was discussing Shellfish Society. In the immortal words if Emily Latella,... "Nevermind."
My office has been taken over by iPod people.
I used to know a lot of people in college who were fanatical about Ayn Rand. Then they grew up. I've yet to meet a Randite who thought they were anything short of exceptional. Every last one cherished the fantasy that they were a Roark or a Galt, that their lack of stunning success in life was because they were surrounded by "leeches", and that under the right circumstances their utter superiority would become manifest and incontrovertible. It's a seductive daydream, particularly to nerds who have raised escapism to an art form, but it's no more than that.
Real live humans are much more diverse and complex than Rand's caricatures, and the difference really does matter. The simplistic half-solutions offered by Rand share a fatal flaw with earlier simplistic solutions inspired (ironically) by Marx, which is that they work only for cartoon characters. Bill Gates is the closest real-life approximation to a Rand "hero", and I don't think we need more of him.
Slashdot - News for Herds. Stuff that Splatters.
This techno-elite, taking sophisticated knowledge of technology for granted, has lost touch with the vast numbers of people in the world -- the elderly, the poor, foreign-born -- who don't share their skills and confidence.
One of the reasons that tech culture seems "selfish" and "arrogant" to others is that the people that run it and work in it have worked HARD to get what they have. Posers, idiots, and other creatures are thrown to the side, because difficult as though it may be to grasp, this culture is a meritocracy. You get what you work for. If you don't know squat, this is easily demonstrable (even by others, to you). This concept is completely foriegn to most people, especially those that have been coddled through life.
You want to be good with tech? You have to be smart and dedicated. If you're not, tough noogies. There aren't armies of geeks wanting to come to your door and baby your email when it doesn't work. The problem is that, of course, everyone is not smart and dedicated. This isn't my problem.
You will find some of the richest in this industry - Gates, being the prime example - are more than happy to give money to worthy causes. Like libraries and feeding starving people. Not coddling idiots.
This sentiment runs deep, I suspect, because most of us got the shaft from "popular culture" when we were young (myself included). Well, the tides are turning, and no, I won't hand things to you on a silver platter. Go bust your ass and then come and talk to me. I'm happy with my world.
As a culture, it mistakes mechanical skills -- like programming an operating system -- with technological knowledge and power. It tolerates an alarming amount of hostility and abuse, both of which make any political communications -- at least those in public -- nearly impossible.
What kind of non-sensical babble is this? The ability to manipulate information processing machines to do what you want (programming) IS power. It's just not a power that's equally distributed. It's a power some of us might have even been born with. "Political communications" - is that what this drivel is? Make sense, man!
Arrgh. I can't deal with this anymore. Get a clue, Katz.
..don't panic
political values when they are such a diverse group?
There are christian geeks, satanic geeks, moon worshipping geeks. Religious diffrences result in different viewpoints on online censorship. On copyright, some want abolishment while others point to copyright as being the basis for the GPL. Geeks have wildly diffrent views on freedom (BSD vs. GPL).
Because Katz isn't a geek, and yet seeks to write about them in perpetuity, he continually convinces himself that there is an overall geek outlook. At best, there is a general tendency towards libertarianism in the computer realm. Jon, the geeks are not going to rise up in unison and stop the "corporatist" usurpers, or whatever your current threat is.
matt
"How could they take my (TV|radio|soma) away?"
Well, enough with the pointless comparisons. I have a couple of issues with what JonKatz says:
- Technology hasn't "become" a social force. It's been a social force since the beginning of what we call "civilization", which is really technology-based. Look at games like Sid Meier's Civilization. You can't play without tech development.
- Libretarianism and individualism are only professed by this collective because it's what suits them. It's about the group needs of the people:
Issues on Slashdot tend to be driven by this group ideal as much as anywhere else; it's a place where it's cool to be anti-Echelon and anti-DMCA. What if I'm anti-Echelon, but pro-Carnivore? What if I think that the DMCA ain't such a bad idea? Individual thought needs to be embraced in any society where we wish idealistic progress to happen. We can't have two straw-man positions.- The need to look "cool", to impress specific peers
- The need to be in a "in crowd", to impress a group
- In general, the need for group acceptance and conformaty, to impress all of your peers.
These needs are what drive people to do things like download songs off of Napster. Some people do GB's of MP3's as a self-worth comparison. When people ask me how many GB I have, I'll tell them 0 - but would you like to look at my CD collection?Where's the complexity of your thoughts? Where can I express that Open Source is good in some areas, but in others some Closed Source software is better, and that Free Software might not ever be the best? Where can I truly be an individual? Certainly not slashdot, despite the hidden references in Katz's essay. Individual thought needs to be sustained, but making straw-man sides out of an issue suits nobody.
Free BeOS, runs from a Linux partition