The Californian Ideology

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. 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. 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." ==Influences==

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. Adam Curtis connects the Californian Ideology's origins to Ayn Rand's philosophy of Objectivism. ==Reception==

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. 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. 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." 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." 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: 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." 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." ==See also==