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Who Killed Paulina Borsook's Career?wired.com

A quarter-century ago, Borsook published a wildly prophetic, penetrating book about Silicon Valley called Cyberselfish. Then she disappeared.

57 points•danielmorozoff•3 days ago•31 comments•
#killed#paulina#career#borsooks#paulina borsooks#borsooks career#killed paulina#killed paulina borsooks

31 comments

adventured2 days ago
https://archive.is/tjCS1
oumua_don172 days ago
Apparently, there's also an illustrated childrens' book by another author Sandra Peterson based on cyberselfish by Paulina [1]

[1] https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0HF8QPPLS

edit: update to mention the new book's author.

verytrivial1 day ago
Strong smell of Ai generation on the cover there.
initramfs1 day ago
Her agent says they can use the Cyberselfish part of the title but not her name. She was made aware of it a few weeks ago.

Trademark, rather than a trade dress issue. https://www.greenbergglusker.com/publications/when-copycats-...

throwaway815232 days ago
This is a pretty interesting article. Firefox shows the first paragraph for a second and then blanks it, but lynx -dump manages to get the text. There's an audio too but I ignored that.
viceconsole2 days ago
Firefox reader mode displays the full article perfectly.
134151 day ago
It shows one paragraph on my machine.
wigster1 day ago
me too
raffraffraff1 day ago
God I hate this writing style. And the title. The reality is probably more bland.

In the 80s and 90s, tech was magic. Lots of computer magazines, cyberpunk novels. Tech fact and fiction sold in huge quantities. Mainstream tech publications depended on tech ad dollars, so editors preferred tech sycophants. There were doom-scarers but it was mostly a utopian thing. It's what got me into tech as a kid.

After the dot-com bubble burst, this imploded. Investment in tech dropped across the board, including advertising tech publications. I'd love to get a count of cyber/tech fiction novels published through the 80s,90s and early dot-com burst.

Arodex1 day ago
>The reality is probably more bland.

Maybe read the article before criticizing. It says the same thing as you.

raffraffraff1 day ago
I did read it. I didn't enjoy reading it. Yes I said the same thing, in fewer words, and I didn't hint that maybe there really was a conspiracy. There doesn't need to be a conspiracy or a blacklist if you rub people up the wrong way, and then the bottom falls out of the market you're writing about.
camillomiller1 day ago
You sound like this touched a nerve. Also, your argument is self defeating. If tech publications were not so dependent on tech ad money after the bubble burst, then critical writing like Borsook’s should have become more palatable and editors would have had some interest in publishing critical stuff.

I don’t think there was a conspiracy, as much as a “we don’t wanna have to do with her because she’s problematic” consensus. The outcome for her was the same.

The kernel of truth here is that the behaviors we see displayed nowadays by tech bros were always there, it’s just that at the time there was less scrutiny, and telling the underdog-changing-the-world-for-the-good-of-all tech story sold their narrative much better.

They were always after the usual triad: power, money, sex.

Read the full thread on Hacker News →

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