"The Californian Ideology" is a 1995 essay by English media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster. Barbrook calls it a "critique of dotcom neoliberalism". [1] In the essay, Barbrook and Cameron argue that the rise of networking technologies in Silicon Valley in the 1990s was linked to American neoliberalism and a paradoxical hybridization of beliefs from the political left and right in the form of hopeful technological determinism.
The essay was published in Mute magazine [2] in 1995 and later appeared on the nettime Internet mailing list. A revised version was published in Science as Culture in 1996. The essay has since been further revised and translated. [1]
Andrew Leonard of Salon called the essay "one of the most penetrating critiques of neo-conservative digital hypesterism yet published". [3] In contrast, Wired magazine publisher Louis Rossetto wrote that the essay showed "profound ignorance of economics". [4]
"This new faith has emerged from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of Silicon Valley...the Californian Ideology promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies."
During the 1990s, members of the entrepreneurial class in the information technology industry in Silicon Valley vocally promoted an ideology that combined the ideas of Marshall McLuhan with elements of radical individualism, libertarianism, and neoliberal economics, using publications like Wired magazine to promulgate their ideas. This ideology mixed New Left and New Right beliefs based on their shared interest in anti-statism, the counterculture of the 1960s, and techno-utopianism. [6]
Proponents believed that in a post-industrial, post-capitalist, knowledge-based economy, the exploitation of information and knowledge would drive growth and wealth creation while diminishing the older power structures of the state in favor of connected individuals in virtual communities. [7]
Critics contend that the Californian Ideology strengthens corporations' power over the individual, increases social stratification, and is distinctly Americentric. Barbrook argues that members of the digerati who adhere to the Californian Ideology embrace a form of reactionary modernism. According to him, "American neo-liberalism seems to have successfully achieved the contradictory aims of reactionary modernism: economic progress and social immobility. Because the long-term goal of liberating everyone will never be reached, the short-term rule of the digerati can last forever." [8]
Sociologist Thomas Streeter of the University of Vermont has said that the Californian Ideology appeared as part of a pattern of Romantic individualism with Stewart Brand as a key influence. [9] Adam Curtis connects the Californian Ideology's origins to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. [10]
While generally agreeing with Barbrook and Cameron's central thesis, David Hudson of Rewired took issue with their portrayal of Wired magazine's position as representative of every viewpoint in the industry. "What Barbrook is saying between the lines is that the people with their hands on the reins of power in all of the wired world...are guided by an utterly skewed philosophical construct." Hudson maintained that there were a multitude of different ideologies at work. [11]
Andrew Leonard of Salon called the essay "a lucid lambasting of right-wing libertarian digerati domination of the Internet" and "one of the most penetrating critiques of neo-conservative digital hypesterism yet published". Leonard also noted what he called former Wired editor and publisher Louis Rossetto's "vitriolic" response. [3]
Rossetto's rebuttal, also published in Mute , criticized the essay as showing "profound ignorance of economics". He also criticized the essay's suggestion that "a uniquely European (but not even vaguely defined) mixed economy solution" would be better for the internet, arguing that Europe's technological development was hampered by "huge plutocratic organizations like Siemens and Philips [that conspire] with bungling bureaucracies to hoover up taxes collected by local and Euro-wide state institutions and shovel them into mammoth technology projects which have proven to be, almost without exception, disasters" and by "High European taxes which have restricted spending on technology and hence retarded its development". [4]
Gary Kamiya, also of Salon, found the essay's main points valid, but, like Rossetto, attacked Barbrook's and Cameron's "ludicrous academic-Marxist claim that high-tech libertarianism somehow represents a recrudescence of racism." [12]
Architecture historian Kazys Varnelis of Columbia University found that in spite of the privatization the Californian Ideology advocates, Silicon Valley's and California's economic growth was "made possible only due to exploitation of the immigrant poor and defense funding...government subsidies for corporations and exploitation of non-citizen poor: a model for future administrations." [13]
In the 2011 documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace , Curtis concludes that the Californian Ideology failed to live up to its claims:
The original promise of the Californian Ideology, was that the computers would liberate us from all the old forms of political control, and we would become Randian heroes, in control of our own destiny. Instead, today, we feel the opposite—that we are helpless components in a global system—a system that is controlled by a rigid logic that we are powerless to challenge or to change. [10]
In 2015, Wired wrote, "Denounced as the work of 'looney lefties' by Silicon Valley's boosters when it first appeared, The Californian Ideology has since been vindicated by the corporate take-over of the Net and the exposure of the NSA's mass surveillance programmes." [14]
In 2022, Hasmet M. Uluorta and Lawrence Quill wrote, "The recent tech-lash, concerns over the gig-economy, and the dubious imperatives of datamining, require us to reconsider the prospects for open societies that rely upon platforms as we enter the next phase of the Californian Ideology." [15]
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: CS1 maint: bot: original URL status unknown (link)Wired is a monthly American magazine, published in print and online editions, that focuses on how emerging technologies affect culture, the economy, and politics. Owned by Condé Nast, its editorial offices are in San Francisco, California, and its business office at Condé Nast headquarters in Liberty Tower in New York City. Wired has been in publication since its launch in January 1993. Several spin-offs have followed, including Wired UK, Wired Italia, Wired Japan, Wired Czech Republic and Slovakia and Wired Germany.
Louis Rossetto is an American writer, editor, and entrepreneur. He is best known as the founder and former editor-in-chief / publisher of Wired magazine. He was also the first investor and the former CEO of TCHO chocolate company.
Technological utopianism is any ideology based on the premise that advances in science and technology could and should bring about a utopia, or at least help to fulfill one or another utopian ideal.
This is a bibliography for Ayn Rand and Objectivism. Objectivism is a philosophical system initially developed in the 20th century by Rand.
The digerati are the elite of digitalization, social media, content marketing, computer industry and online communities. The word is a portmanteau, derived from "digital" and "literati", and reminiscent of the earlier coinage glitterati. Famous computer scientists, tech magazine writers, digital consultants with multi-year experiences and well-known bloggers are included among the digerati.
The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link, normally shortened to The WELL or The Well, is a virtual community that was launched in 1985. It is one of the oldest continuously operating virtual communities. By 1993 it had 7,000 members, a staff of 12, and gross annual income of $2 million. A 1997 feature in Wired magazine called it "The world's most influential online community." In 2012, when it was last publicly offered for sale, it had 2,693 members. It is best known for its Internet forums, but also provides email, shell accounts, and web pages. Discussion topics are organized into conferences that cover broad areas of interest. User anonymity is prohibited.
Nicholas G. Carr is an American journalist and writer who has published books and articles on technology, business, and culture. His book The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains was a finalist for the 2011 Pulitzer Prize in General Nonfiction.
Paul Boutin is an American former magazine writer and editor who writes about technology in a pop-culture context.
Libertarianism is a political philosophy that holds freedom and liberty as primary values. Many libertarians conceive of freedom in accord with the Non-Aggression Principle, according to which each individual has the right to live as they choose, so long as it does not involve violating the rights of others by initiating force or fraud against them.
Richard Barbrook is an academic in the School of Social Sciences, Humanities and Languages at the University of Westminster.
In American politics, fusionism is the philosophical and political combination or "fusion" of traditionalist and social conservatism with political and economic right-libertarianism. Fusionism combines "free markets, social conservatism, and a hawkish foreign policy". The philosophy is most closely associated with Frank Meyer.
Reactionary modernism is a term first coined by Jeffrey Herf in the 1980s to describe the mixture of "great enthusiasm for modern technology with a rejection of the Enlightenment and the values and institutions of liberal democracy" that was characteristic of the German Conservative Revolutionary movement and Nazism. In turn, this ideology of reactionary modernism was closely linked to the original, positive view of the Sonderweg, which saw Germany as the great Central European power, neither of the West nor of the East.
Gary Wesley Westfahl is an American writer and scholar of science fiction. He has written reviews for the Los Angeles Times, The Internet Review of Science Fiction and Locus Online. He worked at the University of California, Riverside until 2011 and is now a Professor Emeritus at the University of La Verne.
Cyber-utopianism, web-utopianism, digital utopianism, or utopian internet is a subcategory of technological utopianism and the belief that online communication helps bring about a more decentralized, democratic, and libertarian society. The desired values may also be privacy and anonymity, freedom of expression, access to culture and information or also socialist ideals leading to digital socialism.
In Marxist thought, a communist society or the communist system is the type of society and economic system postulated to emerge from technological advances in the productive forces, representing the ultimate goal of the political ideology of communism. A communist society is characterized by common ownership of the means of production with free access to the articles of consumption and is classless, stateless, and moneyless, implying the end of the exploitation of labour.
Paulina Borsook is an American technology journalist and writer who has written for Wired, Mother Jones, and Suck.com. She is perhaps best known for her 2000 book Cyberselfish, a critique of the libertarian mindset of the digital technology community. As an artist-in-residence at Stanford University, in 2013 she began work on My Life as a Ghost, an art installation based on her experiences living with the traumatic brain injury she suffered due to a gunshot when she was 14 years old.
The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement, is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, and reactionary philosophical and political movement. The term "Dark Enlightenment" is a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment and an apologia for the popular conception of the Dark Ages.
Technolibertarianism, sometimes referred to as cyberlibertarianism, is a political philosophy with roots in the Internet's early hacker cypherpunk culture in Silicon Valley in the early 1990s and in American libertarianism. The philosophy focuses on minimizing government regulation, censorship, or anything else in the way of a "free" World Wide Web. In this case, the word "free" is referring to the meaning of libre, not gratis. Cyber-libertarians embrace fluid, meritocratic hierarchies, which are believed to be best served by markets. The most widely known cyberlibertarian is Julian Assange. The term technolibertarian was popularized in critical discourse by technology writer Paulina Borsook.
Transhumanist politics constitutes a group of political ideologies that generally express the belief in improving human individuals through science and technology. Specific topics include space migration, and cryogenic suspension. It is considered the opposing ideal to the concept of bioconservatism, as Transhumanist politics argue for the use of all technology to enhance human individuals.
Andy Cameron was a British interactive artist and writer, notable for being a founder of art collective group Antirom. He co-authored the highly cited essay The Californian Ideology with Richard Barbrook. In 2011 he received the Royal Designers for Industry award from The Royal Society of Arts.