Californian Ideology Concepts

Crack-Up Capitalism: Market Radicals and the Dream of a World Without Democracy

by Quinn Slobodian · 4 Apr 2023 · 360pp · 107,124 words

, https://bentarnoff.substack.com/p/the-metaverse-is-a-cubicle?s=r. 77. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Mute 1, no. 3 (September 1, 1995), https://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology. 78. See Phil Jones, Work Without the Worker: Labour in the Age of Platform Capitalism (New York: Verso

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection

by Jacob Silverman · 17 Mar 2015 · 527pp · 147,690 words

, it would become less and less possible to say anything sensible about the society in which they were applied? —Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology” In 1995, two British media theorists, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, launched an extraordinary broadside against Silicon Valley. In a work they titled “The

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Californian Ideology,” Barbrook and Cameron described a “new faith” emerging “from a bizarre fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco with the hi-tech industries of

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Silicon Valley.” Mixing “the freewheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies,” the Californian Ideology drew on the state’s history of countercultural rebellion, its role as a crucible of the New Left, the global village prophecies of media theorist

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individuality would be allowed its fullest expression, away from the encumbrances of government and even of the physical world. As Barbrook and Cameron recognized, the Californian Ideology was contradictory, but it also “[derived] its popularity from the very ambiguity of its precepts.” Part of this belief system’s appeal was its ability

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better place. Joining Microsoft or AOL didn’t mean selling out; it only meant recalibrating one’s sense of how utopia might be achieved. The Californian Ideology was based on a feeling—widely shared in the nascent years of the World Wide Web—that a revolution was under way, not only of

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revolutionist in the world.” Leave us alone and we’ll change the world for the better, the industry promised. Though he goes unmentioned in “The Californian Ideology,” Steve Jobs was the archetypal Californian ideologue.* Steeped in the counterculture, Jobs had dated Joan Baez, regarded his experience with LSD as among the most

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have introduced some humility, along with some critical self-examination about the role of technology in human affairs. The opposite has been the case. The Californian Ideology chugs along, finding new forms for new times. Steve Jobs remains secure in his perch as an industry icon, his example now posthumous and unimpeachable

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into a series of company towns. These are steps toward the kind of digital agora sought by adherents of Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s Californian Ideology. It’s a vision that’s been cultivated over decades and that has a very real effect on the types of products and digital environments

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, a blog on Gawker. Sept. 11, 2013. gawker.com/why-pax-dickinson-matters-1293728062. 1 “from a bizarre fusion”: Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron. “The Californian Ideology.” Alamut. alamut.com/subj/ideologies/pessimism/califIdeo_I.html. 2 “all the ills of society”: Tim Wu. The Master Switch. New York: Random House, 2010

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and shareable news goal, 114, 115, 117 thisness, 118–19, 120 Upworthy compared to, 121–22 Byrne, Richard, x Caldwell, Dalton, 50, 95, 362–63 “Californian Ideology, The” (Barbrook and Cameron), 1–3, 4, 250–51 call and response (alerts), 50–53 cameras on smartphones, 41–42, 55, 57 Cameron, Andy, 1

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, NY 10007 www.harpercollins.com * The essay, while deeply perceptive, curiously doesn’t mention many technology-industry figures by name. But in 1995, when “The Californian Ideology” was published, Jobs had been booted from Apple ten years earlier and wouldn’t return until 1997, when Apple bought his company NeXT Computer. † At

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism

by Fred Turner · 31 Aug 2006 · 339pp · 57,031 words

the twentieth century. In 1998 Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron named Wired’s particular blend of libertarian politics, countercultural aesthetics, and techno-utopian visions the “Californian Ideology.” As they pointed out, by the end of the decade, its tenets had become the day-to-day orthodoxy of technologists in Silicon Valley and

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the Trees Said; Gaskin, Hey Beatnik!; Gravy, Hog Farm and Friends; Mungo, Total Loss Farm; Rabbit, Drop City. 75. See, e.g., Barbrook and Cameron, “Californian Ideology.” 76. See, e.g., Bey, T.A.Z., 95 –114. 77. For a persuasive attempt to locate the SDS and the youth movements of the

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look like it had just arrived from the future.” Smith, “WiReD”; Rossetto, “Why Wired?” 3. Metcalfe, quoted in Gilbert, “Getting Wired.” 4. Barbrook and Cameron, “Californian Ideology.” Louis Rossetto issued a famously ﬁery response to Barbrook and Cameron, which can be found at http://www.hrc.wmin .ac.uk/hrc/theory/californianideo

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and of cyberlibertarianism more generally, see Borsook, Cyberselﬁsh; Liu, Laws of Cool; Mosco, Digital Sublime; Terranova, Network Culture. As Thomas Streeter has pointed out, the Californian ideology emerged out of a wider tradition of Romantic individualism, within which Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog played an important role. See Streeter, “That

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of digital technologies on workers overseas, and particularly in India, see Aneesh, Virtual Migration. 22. Ullman, Close to the Machine, 127. 23. Barbrook and Cameron, “Californian Ideology.” 24. The term digerati was almost certainly coined by John Brockman, a member of the downtown New York art scene of the early 1960s and

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. 12 (December 1998). Available at http://www.ﬁrstmonday.org/issues/issue3_12/barbrook/index.html (accessed October 10, 2001). Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. “The Californian Ideology (Extended Mix).” September 18, 1998. Available at http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/hrc/theory/ californianideo/main/t.4.2.html (accessed September 27, 2005

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10 (1943): 18 –24. Ross, Andrew. No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. New York: Basic Books, 2003. Rossetto, Louis. Response to the “Californian Ideology.” Available at http://www.hrc.wmin.ac .uk/theory-californianideology-responses1.html (accessed October 7, 1998). ———. “Why Wired?” Wired, March 1993. Rossetto, Louis, Jane Metcalfe

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,” 106 –7 Business 2.0 (magazine), 207 butterﬂy ecology, 43 Byte (magazine), 137 Cage, John, 43, 46 – 47, 67; Theatre Piece No. 1, 47– 48 “Californian Ideology,” 208, 285n4 Callahan, Michael, 48, 51, 66 Callon, Michelle, 277n71 Calvert, Greg, 35 Calvin, William, 191 Cameron, Andy, 208, 259 Carlston, Doug, 135 Carpenter, Edmund

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology

by Anu Bradford · 25 Sep 2023 · 898pp · 236,779 words

about technology. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron have described the ethos behind the rise of the American internet economy as a reflection of a distinct “Californian ideology,” in that it combines the “freewheeling spirit of the hippies” and the “entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies.”5 These different West Coast communities—writers, artists

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nation state, fueling competition, and empowering technology entrepreneurs.10 Even though the early days of the internet combined left and right ideologies under a shared Californian ideology, the free-market ideology has subsequently come to transcend the original countercultural roots of the market-driven model as the internet has further commercialized.11

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its own social contract and sets its own rules. Barlow also advances a view that is optimistic and empowering. Capturing the emancipatory spirit of the Californian ideology, he describes the cyberspace as “a world that all may enter without privilege or prejudice” and as a place that is “more humane and fair

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big technology companies while leaving large swaths of the society without the benefits of the internet revolution. This suggests that the emancipatory promise behind the Californian ideology has failed to materialize, raising a question whether a self-governing cyberspace can ultimately deliver individual freedom and societal progress, as the proponents of the

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societies in profound ways. Despite their multifaceted global influence, the ethos of these US companies is far from global. These companies continue to reflect the “Californian ideology” and the American techno-libertarian instincts, exporting within their products and services the values of the US market-driven regulatory model. Building on the discussion

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of the New Future (2022). 3.Id. at ch. 1. 4.O’Mara, supra note 1, at ch. 2. 5.Richard Barbrook & Andy Cameron, The Californian Ideology, 6 Sci. as Culture 44, 45, 49 (1996). 6.Id. at 44–45. 7.James A. Lewis, Sovereignty and the Role of Government in Cyberspace

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back

by Juliet Schor, William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy · 15 Mar 2020 · 296pp · 83,254 words

of personal computers and belief in their social powers.5 Understanding this history helps explain why platforms raised such hopes and went so wrong. The Californian Ideology The 1960s counterculture that was centered in San Francisco is now mostly famous for psychedelic drugs, “flower power,” and the Grateful Dead. But in its

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the ecotopias they had failed to create in their back-to-the-land phase. The New Communalists’ views morphed into what became known as the Californian Ideology.7 It combined libertarian politics, countercultural aesthetics, and techno-utopian visions.8 Its core belief was that technology would yield personal liberation and egalitarian community

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, feedback loops, and self-correcting mechanisms, which appeared as dynamic algorithms, surge pricing, and crowd-sourced data.12 As it happened, the gelling of the Californian Ideology coincided with the neoliberal policy turn of the 1980s. Cyberutopians jumped on the “free market” bandwagon,* combining “the free-wheeling spirit” of hippies with the

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also fatuous, as recent political events have made clear.20 And in retrospect we can see that entitlement played an important role in solidifying the Californian Ideology. Adherents were mostly white, highly educated, well-off men who lived in a bubble of privilege they failed to recognize. It’s not surprising they

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free of domination. See also Turner (2006); and Thomas Frank (2000). 8. Turner (2006, 208) takes issue with Barbrook and Cameron’s claim that the Californian Ideology emerged from the New Left. He argues its origins were Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth network and New Communalism. 9. Tech pioneers such as John

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and Uber: In Six Major US Regions.” Fehr and Peers. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FIUskVkj9lsAnWJQ6kLhAhNoVLjfFdx3/view. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. 1996. “The Californian Ideology.” Science as Culture 6 (1): 44–72. Barrios, John M., Yael V. Hochberg, and Livia Hanyi Yi. 2018. “The Cost of Convenience: Ridesharing and Traffic

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Burnham, Brad, 38 Business to Business (B2B) platforms, 192 Business to Consumer (B2C) platforms, 192 Busque, Leah, 25, 34 Cain, Taylor, 181 California legislation, 161 Californian ideology, 21–24 Cameron, Lindsay, 68, 77 Camp, Garrett, 25 Cansoy, Mehmet, 14, 90, 182 capitalism: platform, 13, 30, 150–52; and sharing economy, 2, 6

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation

by Paris Marx · 4 Jul 2022 · 295pp · 81,861 words

Andy Cameron dubbed the ideology that grew out of this movement, especially as it found common cause with the neoliberal policies of the 1980s, the “Californian Ideology.” The way of thinking it embodied “simultaneously reflects the disciplines of market economics and the freedoms of hippie artisanship. This bizarre hybrid is only made

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possible through a nearly universal belief in technological determinism.”10 The counterculture’s aversion to politics was central to the Californian Ideology. Its adherents believed social change would happen by engaging in the market and trusting in the process of technological development to empower not only the

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as the means to address social and economic challenges. Steve Jobs’s narrative about the personal computer can be seen as a reflection of the Californian Ideology. By downplaying the role of the state in developing the foundational companies and institutions of Silicon Valley in the first place, Jobs made it seem

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restricted the activities and power of unions, and its full effects remain to be seen. The story of Uber demonstrates the continued relevance of the Californian Ideology. The company’s faith in the market and new technologies to transform the taxi industry was unwavering, and at least presented the outward justification of

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of Chicago Press, 2006, p. 31. 7 Ibid., p. 73. 8 Ibid., p. 76. 9 Ibid., p. 14. 10 Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture 6:1, 1996, imaginaryfutures.net. 11 Saxenian, Regional Advantage, p. 90. 12 O’Mara, The Code, p. 214. 13 Ibid., p. 226

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(See Los Angeles, CA) not in my backyard (NIMBY), 164 Proposition 22, 111–2 worker employment rights in, 185 California Commission on Industrial Innovation, 45 Californian Ideology, 44, 112 Cameron, Andy, 44 Camp, Garrett, 93 Canada bike lanes in, 171 intercity bus system in, 219 mineral supplies from, 79–80 ride-hailing

The Twittering Machine

by Richard Seymour · 20 Aug 2019 · 297pp · 83,651 words

emerged in the 1980s and 1990s, was shaped by an aleatory fusion of hippy and New Right ideologies. Averse to public ownership and regulation, this ‘Californian Ideology’, as Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron dubbed it, was libertarian, property-based and individualist.72 The internet was supposed to be a new agora, a

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the Realistic Manifesto, that we can begin to transcend the rule of brute facts. In this sense, there is a genuine utopian kernel to the Californian Ideology, even if its embodiment within social media is a utopia only for trolls and other sociopaths. The problem is not the lies. It is information

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America

by Margaret O'Mara · 8 Jul 2019

. 3. Quoted in Lambert et al., “Esther Dyson.” 4. See, for example, Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron’s incendiary take on Silicon Valley mythmaking, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture 6, no. 1 (January 1996): 44–72. On the National Performance Review, see Al Gore, The Gore Report on Reinventing Government: Creating

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World

by Jamie Bartlett · 12 Jun 2017 · 390pp · 109,870 words

Lane, 2013), pp. 124–39 for discussion of cyber-utopianism in relation to networks and flat hierarchies. Also see Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian ideology’, Mute, September 1995, and Richard Barbrook, Media Freedom: The Contradictions of Communications in the Age of Modernity (Pluto Press, 1995), p. 14 for an early

The New Class Conflict

by Joel Kotkin · 31 Aug 2014 · 362pp · 83,464 words

, 92–94. 41. Myles D. Crandall, “Lockheed Grew up with Sunnyvale,” Silicon Valley Business Journal, February 25, 2007. 42. Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture, vol. 6, no. 1 (1996): 44–72. 43. Arun Rao, with Piero Scaruffi, A History of Silicon Valley: The Greatest Creation of