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Tin House to reissue 2000 book Cyberselfish, author says
TechCrunch reports Paulina Borsook said Tin House is bringing Cyberselfish back into print, with a new introduction, after used copies and social posts revived interest in her 2000 critique of Silicon Valley.
- New headline Was: “‘Cyberselfish’ author takes aim at Silicon Valley libertarians as her book returns from the dead”
- Our desk filed its story
Paulina Borsook said publisher Tin House is reissuing her 2000 book Cyberselfish, long out of print, TechCrunch reported Sunday after a Zoom interview1.
Borsook told the outlet the book was meant as a travelogue of what she calls techno-libertarian influence on Silicon Valley culture, not a polemic1.
She described that outlook as a basket of beliefs that is violently anti-regulation, and said no sector had benefited more and suffered less from government than the people she was writing about1. Asked why that view is a problem, she said, “That’s a 12-year-old view of the world”1.
TechCrunch said Gil Durán, author of Nerd Reich, last year called for reviving Borsook’s career, and that interest later included rising prices for used copies, unexpected social-media posts, and inquiries from European academics1. Borsook said that after the first edition, no one was interested in what she might say about tech or anything else1.
The new edition is the 2000 text unchanged, she said, plus a new introduction by Durán and a short one of her own on how the book came back; she said the acquiring editor told her not to change a word1.
Borsook said she sees continuity more than a break with the present, dating a shift to the Netscape IPO and finance-driven attitudes that she said persisted after the dot-com crash1. She distinguished what she called Ravers and Gilders in the original book and said that split still describes conservative and culturally liberal strains in the industry’s leadership class1.
She said she is unsure what to tell young engineers who reject that culture, citing AI-heavy investment and weaker government and nonprofit hiring, and that she is cynical about large companies changing from within1. TechCrunch did not report a comment from the companies or figures she named1.
