Rating: 
Summary: Funny and true to heart.
Review: Let me start off by saying I worked in the Valley. And I left the Valley just before the bust. I remember many a co-workers' rants against the evils of government, etc., so it got to be a cliche. In some instances their rants rang true. But one cannot deny that if it was not for government spending, many of the things we take for granted, including the net may not exist.
After the bust in the valley, I recall several e-mails from so called libertarians complaining that the government was not doing enough to turn the economy around. So, yes, I agree with Ms Borsook that there is a large degree of selfishness in the Valley and I enjoyed and was amused by her book. I was also amused my the negative feed back. How do you say - it hurts to read the truth.
Rating: 
Summary: More from the apologists of the Newt Economy
Review: Living in San Francisco, and working in Silicon Valley I had hoped this book would be a critical analysis of the exploitative nature of the so-called Cyber Culture. In fact, it's just another rant about how great the NewT Economy really is.There is virtually no analysis of how the driving forces of capitalism chews up people's liberty, how Wired magazine pulled all their original ideas from Holland, how the magazine's float went pear-shaped, or how actually working there really was for the non-celebrity staff. Another book written by Americans for American Porsche Boxster owners and sad Ann Rynd sychophants. Avoid.
Rating:
Summary: Waaaah! I wanna, I wanna! WAAAHHH!
Review: Ms. Borsook is a common manifestation of the trendy-lefty academe': full of criticism of people who have done well, and proposing nothing as an alternative. What she knows about "libertarianism" (which she and most of the other reviewers here seem to have confused with Randian "objectivism") could fit in a flea's navel and it would still rattle. SO - we get a (libertarian-approved, mind you!) self-indulgant rant (or rather, a long, drawn-out whine) complete with name-calling, 60's-style Marxist cant (how did she ever manage to leave out Marcuse?), and the usual "it-takes-a-village" load of cobblers. I would be the first one to say that I have a hard time swallowing the "living well is the best revenge" mentality, but Ms. Borsook makes that look like a deeply-thought-out philosophical premise compared to her vision, which in essence seems to be the basic plot of Kornbluth's "Marching Morons". This is neither enlightening as to the origins and politics of Silicon Valley (or the "Silicon Forest" where I live) nor educational in the sense of presenting a thesis and then examining critically any evidence in support of said thesis. Of course, if you pick up a book self-titled a "romp", I suppose such expectations are out of line, almost unfair, sort of like expecting Kesey's "Merry Pranksters" to sit down and discuss Wittgenstein with you. Her's seems to be a mind wired not to process information and reach logical conclusions, but to emote and fling epithets as a monkey hurls feces. She preaches to the faithful - she certainly won't make converts of anyone who looks for logic and reason in their discourse.
Rating: 
Summary: Starts well, gets tedious
Review: Ms. Borsook's book starts out well, makes some good points, including the basic idea that the prevalent libertarianism associated with high tech culture is selfish, misguided yet a growing force in America today. Her insights from attendance at various high-tech events were particularly interesting. However, I have given up in the middle of her chapter about the magazine "Wired", which is based on her personal experiences and oh Lord does she grind the ax to the nub. After a while her writing style also gets extremely tedious: paragraph-length sentences full of jargon-laden descriptives, high tech turns of phrase and dependent clauses. Maybe you need to write that way for magazines to get as much information as you can into a short space, but in a book it really starts to wear.
Rating:
Summary: Probably amusing if you already agree...
Review: Now, I'll admit to leaning libertarian myself, but I really really did try to give this book a chance. But at the end of the day, the book is an attack without an argument, and with very little analysis. The book is premised on the idea that practically everyone in the tech industry is a "libertarian"... which, in the author's caricature, means some sort of selfishness-celebrating Ayn Randroid. As far as I can tell, she's not very familiar with libertarian ideas (against which there are various good arguments to be made... but she apparently didn't care to learn enough about the ideas to make them) and mostly resorts to amateur psychologizing, and insinuating that libertarians are just nasty people. What facts do make it into the book aren't even very carefully checked (she says something about the Cato Institute having been around since the 60s...) So I guess if you already dislike libertarians and want something to chuckle along to, this is OK. If you want a serious critical examination of (and attack on) libertarian ideas, though, try Will Kymlicka's "Contemporary Political Philosophy" which has a chapter on them. This little tome is about as reasonable as a Rush Limbaugh screed. Or maybe those Jack Chick religious pamphlets which show liberals scheming about how to destroy Christianity through satanic rock music.
Rating:
Summary: Probably amusing if you already agree...
Review: Now, I'll admit to leaning libertarian myself, but I really really did try to give this book a chance. But at the end of the day, the book is an attack without an argument, and with very little analysis. The book is premised on the idea that practically everyone in the tech industry is a "libertarian"... which, in the author's caricature, means some sort of selfishness-celebrating Ayn Randroid. As far as I can tell, she's not very familiar with libertarian ideas (against which there are various good arguments to be made... but she apparently didn't care to learn enough about the ideas to make them) and mostly resorts to amateur psychologizing, and insinuating that libertarians are just nasty people. What facts do make it into the book aren't even very carefully checked (she says something about the Cato Institute having been around since the 60s...) So I guess if you already dislike libertarians and want something to chuckle along to, this is OK. If you want a serious critical examination of (and attack on) libertarian ideas, though, try Will Kymlicka's "Contemporary Political Philosophy" which has a chapter on them. This little tome is about as reasonable as a Rush Limbaugh screed. Or maybe those Jack Chick religious pamphlets which show liberals scheming about how to destroy Christianity through satanic rock music.
Rating: 
Summary: Insightful & intelligent, yet whiffs of Gen-X
Review: Paulina writes with depth, research, and insight - attempting to deflate as many ego balloons as possible about the New Economy without providing an alternative or giving full credit to the personalities behind the culture, whom are naught but nerdy male cardboard cutouts by the time she's finished with them. You can't write off Paulina as a crank - she's far more even handed than one would expect, protecting credibility seems to a major objective here. A very cocksure and interesting writer who keeps her passive-aggressiveness well hidden. A Worthwhile, but uncomfortable read.
Rating:
Summary: Great Polemic Writing!
Review: Some say "Rant" I say Polemic. Nothing wrong with a skillfully-written critique; and that is what Cyberselfish dishes out in rich detail. The cyber-Darwinians may scream like the stuck pigs they can be when living out their Robert A. Heinlein space-cowboy individualist libertarian fantasies, but this book is worth reading. Life is not a subroutine. It takes more than code to build a real community. And most of us who were using CP/M on Z80 chips in the pre-MS-DOS/Microsoft days recognized it for the kludged together piece of junk it was until IBM flooded the market and diverted the writing of new code to fixing the lousy MS-DOS and providing various utilities and shells. So Borsook got that claim right. -Chip Berlet
Rating:
Summary: Scary and good
Review: The author clearly knows of what she speaks. The view she gives of the high tech world meshes well with the larger world outside in which a few fortunate souls get to become rich, while the people who helped them get rich get the shaft. The government that ensures their clean water, clean air, paved roads, and their tech jobs gets criticized for doing nothing right. I particularly disliked the self-aggrandizing behavior of the cyber-crats and the idea that "I got mine, now you go out and get yours."
Rating:
Summary: Scary and good
Review: The author makes some good points. In particular about how shallow and self-serving a lot of the libertarianism of the "New Economy." But it's not like you can't find these observations in a more tempered and nuanced fashion. The book reads partly like her own gripes with the industry that she fell into. Here's an anecdote she recounts that struck me as strange: She tells the story of a Latino kid who goes to CSU-Los Angeles and gets a degree in Computer Science but can't find a job and has to go work with his dad as a gardener. Something is missing here. The author claims this is bona fide proof that the high-tech world is an insulated world, and clearly implies there are racial and class barriers. The fact is I personally know dozens of people from "sub-par" Universities and those with NO COLLEGE DEGREE that work in the computer industry, that don't have "connections" of any kind. They just have to have skills (or intelligence enough to manage and a high learning curve). If the racial barriers are so great, what explains the large % of Asians in the tech industry? I don't deny subtle racism and barriers, but these are symptomatic of humans, not the IT industry in particular and certainly not a result of "cyberselfishness." Sounds like the author has a big axe to grind and will find isolated examples to prove it.
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