Californian Ideology

Terms of Service: Social Media and the Price of Constant Connection
by Jacob Silverman
Published 17 Mar 2015

And who would have suspected that as technology and freedom were worshipped more and more, 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 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 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 Marshall McLuhan, and “a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies.”

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Survivors of the “Me” decade, weaned on utopian sci-fi novels, self-help, and new-age spiritualism, adherents of this faith forsook the street-side rebellion and civil actions of an earlier generation in favor of “a contradictory mix of technological determinism and libertarian individualism.” Freedom would not be found in the streets but in an “electronic agora”—an open digital marketplace where 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 to combine a host of sometimes incompatible materials—radical individualism and digital community; neoliberal, free-market capitalism and an Internet industry pioneered by government-funded programs; countercultural rebellion and corporate conformity.

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For hackers-turned-systems-engineers or DIY artists-turned-graphic designers, this kind of belief held great appeal. It promised not only that their lives were authentic, but also that they had value and might make the world a 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 communications and commerce, but also of social relations and culture. In fact, while few recognized it, there was little new about this. As Tim Wu and other media historians have chronicled, from the telegraph to the telephone to television, “the advent of every new technology of communication always brings with it a hope for ameliorating all the ills of society.”

After the Gig: How the Sharing Economy Got Hijacked and How to Win It Back
by Juliet Schor , William Attwood-Charles and Mehmet Cansoy
Published 15 Mar 2020

For centuries new machines and methods of communications have arrived with outsized hopes about their ability to change the world.3 Sharing initiatives were mainly greeted with technological enthusiasm, which attracted users and propelled growth.4 This technophilia wasn’t just a passion of the moment. It can be traced back decades, to the invention 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 heyday it posed a profound challenge to modern society, in the form of a critique of concentrated power and a desire for egalitarian social relations.

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Their bible was Stuart Brand’s Whole Earth Catalog, which was known for its innovative gadgets and technical offerings. When personal computing and the internet developed in the 1990s, New Communalists hailed them as the route to 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. Individuals could now determine their own fates, as personal computers plus the internet offered ways to earn money without relying on a bureaucratic institution.9 The financial accessibility of computers meant that everyone could join in as equals.

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An additional dimension of New Communalist thinking—cybernetics, the study of machine-based control—is also present in the design of sharing platforms. It focused on information, 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 “entrepreneurial zeal” of yuppies.13 In the process they came to believe in what Thomas Frank calls “market populism,” the view that “markets enjoyed some mystic, organic connection to the people while governments were fundamentally illegitimate.”14 Technology corporations were heralded as agents of revolution,15 and the task of those in the digital vanguard was to free the companies from the pesky regulations of government bureaucrats.16 The crucial intellectual move here was the conflation of individual liberty with freedom for corporations, an equivalence that made sense to cyberutopians who had been heavily engaged with Silicon Valley companies for years.17 The 1996 Telecommunications Act deregulated the sector, and platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Amazon morphed into monopolies with virtually no opposition.

Road to Nowhere: What Silicon Valley Gets Wrong About the Future of Transportation
by Paris Marx
Published 4 Jul 2022

Critical scholars Richard Barbrook and 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 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 individual, but also the wider world.

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The path to a better world was no longer in retreating from society or simply engaging with corporate America, but faith was also put in technology itself 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 as though the technologies emerging from the Valley and the economic activity that came along with it were the product of technological progress and its commercialization by private companies.

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But in doing so, they also opened the door for other companies to reclassify their workers as contractors in the future. Dubal called Proposition 22 “the most radical undoing of labor legislation since Taft-Hartley in 1947,”28 a federal bill that 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 improving the world. To that end, Uber ignored rules and regulations that impeded its rapid expansion and engaged with the political system only to stifle any attempts to enforce them.

The People vs Tech: How the Internet Is Killing Democracy (And How We Save It)
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 4 Apr 2018

The medium, remember, is the message. And the medium of digital technology, as a sector, is now monopolising the whole economy. Back in 1995, in an extremely perceptive paper, left-wing academics Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron detailed the philosophy and ideas of the new tech wunderkinds, which they christened ‘The Californian Ideology’, a fusion of the cultural bohemianism of San Francisco and entrepreneurial free market zeal. This ideology, they thought, was appealing because it offered a way out of the traditional political struggles over wealth distribution or fairness. A profound faith in the emancipatory qualities of technology allowed the techies to paper over any inconsistencies between the yuppy and hippie ideals, because they promised that when the revolution arrived everyone would be great and cool and fulfilled and rich.

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A profound faith in the emancipatory qualities of technology allowed the techies to paper over any inconsistencies between the yuppy and hippie ideals, because they promised that when the revolution arrived everyone would be great and cool and fulfilled and rich. All you needed to get to utopia was a belief in ‘disruption’, the idea that progress is achieved through smashing up old industries and institutions and replacing them with something new and digital. Steve Jobs – at once the acid-dropping hippy and the ruthless businessman – was this Californian Ideology incarnate. This is the secret behind the digital revolution. The reason that start-ups flock to Silicon Valley is not just the promise of building a better world – it’s because that’s where the venture capital is. Money and ideas in Silicon Valley have a very complicated relationship. Even start-up visionaries and wide-eyed socially minded inventors need money to survive, to pay extortionate Bay Area rent and to hire the best programmers.

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In some ways, tech is just the latest vehicle for very rich people to use well-tested techniques of buying political influence, monopolistic behaviour and regulation avoidance, to help them become even richer. Doing it through tech allows them to add a glossy veneer of progress on top of some very familiar behaviour. Over the years, the big tech firms have very carefully cultivated the Californian Ideology: even though they are massive multi-billion-dollar corporations with huge PR teams, they pitch themselves as anti-establishment; even though they are built on a model of data extraction and surveillance capitalism, they purport to be promoting exciting and liberating technology; even though they are dominated by rich white guys, they talk of social justice and equality.

Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life and Beyond
by Tamara Kneese
Published 14 Aug 2023

Communicative Biocapitalism: The Voice of the Patient in Digital Health and the Health Humanities. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2017. Barassi, Veronica. Child Data Citizen: How Tech Companies Are Profiling Us from Before Birth. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2020. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. “The Californian Ideology.” Mute Magazine 1, no. 3 (1995). www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology. Bardham, Ashley. “Men Are Creating AI Girlfriends and Then Verbally Abusing Them.” Futurism, January 18, 2022. futurism.com/chatbot-abuse. Barthes, Roland. Camera Lucida: Reflections on Photography. New York: Hill and Wang, 1981. Barthes, Roland.

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Silicon Valley refers not only to a physical geographical location in Santa Clara County, California, where many major tech companies are headquartered, but also to an ideological space that has global ramifications and interdependencies.66 Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron refer to the power of the “Californian Ideology,” or the region’s blend of neoliberal self-reliance and techno-utopianism.67 Informal networks and burgeoning wealth spurred the creation of venture capital firms in the 1960s and 1970s.68 Silicon Valley is a place of deep inequalities, not only inside the heart of tech campuses—where food service workers sleep in vans because they cannot afford the rent while billionaires speed by in their Teslas—but also in terms of the financial structures of businesses and the values embedded in the technologies such companies peddle.

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Tufekci, Twitter and Teargas; Jackson, Bailey, and Foucault Welles, #HashtagActivism. 63. Shirky, Here Comes Everybody; Benkler, The Wealth of Networks. 64. Dean, “Affective Networks”; Papacharissi, Affective Publics. 65. Atanasoski and Vora, Surrogate Humanity. 66. Irani, Chasing Innovation; Lindtner, Prototype Nation. 67. Barbrook and Cameron, “The Californian Ideology.” 68. Castells and Hall, Technopoles of the World. 69. Neff, Venture Labor. 70. Daub, “The Undertakers of Silicon Valley.” 71. Benjamin, Race After Technology; Chun, Discriminating Data; Eubanks, Automating Inequality; Hicks, Programmed Inequality; Noble, Algorithms of Oppression. 72.

From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism
by Fred Turner
Published 31 Aug 2006

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/response/t.4.2.6.html. For critiques of Wired 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.

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Together, Wired seemed to suggest, these two communities had set about to free America and the world from the rigid, oppressive corporate and government bureaucracies of 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 beyond. But this ubiquitous set of beliefs did not in fact grow out of the legacy of the New Left, as Barbrook and Cameron suggested. Rather, a close look at Wired’s first and most influential five years suggests that the magazine’s vision of the digital horizon emerged in large part from its intellectual and interpersonal affiliations with Kevin Kelly and the Whole Wired [ 209 ] Earth network and, through them, from the New Communalist embrace of the politics of consciousness.4 Although Louis Rossetto and Jane Metcalfe founded Wired, and although Rossetto’s libertarian politics exerted a substantial influence on the magazine, Rossetto and Metcalfe also drew heavily for funds and, later, for subjects and writers, on the Whole Earth world.

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The founders of communes and early residents often wrote vivid portraits of their communities as they lived in them. Books in this vein include Diamond, What 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 1960s within a broader New Left framework and a multidecade framework, see Gosse, “Movement of Movements.” SDS, “Port Huron Statement,” 163 –72, quotation on 164. As historian Douglas Rossinow put it, “Whatever else it was, the New Left was a response to the deepening symptoms of life under advanced, bureaucratic capitalism.”

What's Yours Is Mine: Against the Sharing Economy
by Tom Slee
Published 18 Nov 2015

Quartz, April 14, 2015. http://qz.com/383160/citgroup-has-finally-thrown-its-lot-in-with-online-lending/. ———. “Wall Street Is Hogging the Peer-to-Peer Lending Market.” Quartz, March 4, 2015. http://qz.com/355848/wall-street-is-hogging-the-peer-to-peer-lending-market/. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. “The Californian Ideology.” Mute, August 1995. http://www.imaginaryfutures.net/2007/04/17/the-californian-ideology-2/. Bardhi, Fleura, and Giana M. Eckhardt. “Access-Based Consumption: The Case of Car Sharing.” Journal of Consumer Research 39 (December 2012): 881–98. Bates, Jo. “‘This Is What Modern Deregulation Looks like’: Co-Optation and Contestation in the Shaping of the UK’s Open Government Data Initiative” 8, no. 2 (2012). http://ci-journal.net/index.php/ciej/article/view/845/916.

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Industries built on openness have delivered some remarkable things, but they have repeatedly failed to deliver on their promises of democratization and equality, and the Sharing Economy is busy running down the path paved by these previous industries. As Silicon Valley has grown wealthier and more powerful, the beliefs that you can do well by doing good and that markets can in fact be used to “scale up” efforts for social change, have become mainstream within ­Internet culture. It’s a viewpoint sometimes called the Californian ­Ideology.3 From global poverty to civil liberties to education and healthcare, ­Internet ­culture sees the combination of technology and the entrepreneurial mindset as the key to solving our biggest problems. But markets, sharing, and social good are uneasy partners, and the relationships between them are the subject of Chapter 8.

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“Green Benefits,” n.d. http://www.zipcar.com/universities/how/greenbenefits. Endnotes Chapter 1 1 Tanz, “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” 2 In a completely different context, I am following the example of MacQueen, The 2001 Anthrax Deception. 3 Barbrook and Cameron, “The Californian Ideology.” Chapter 2 1 Botsman, “Transcript of ‘The Currency of the New Economy Is Trust.’” 2 Fowler and Rusli, “Don’t Talk to Strangers, Unless You Plan to Share Your Mac-and-Cheese.” 3 Tanz, “How Airbnb and Lyft Finally Got Americans to Trust Each Other.” 4 Botsman, “The Sharing Economy Lacks a Shared Definition.” 5 Owyang, “The Collaborative Sharing Economy Has Created 17 Billion-Dollar Companies (and 10 Unicorns).” 6 “From the People, for the People.” 7 Lapowsky, “Believe It.” 8 Schor, “Debating the Sharing Economy.” 9 Johnson, Future Perfect: The Case for Progress in a Networked Age. 10 Tam and Merced, “Uber Fund-Raising Points to $50 Billion Valuation.” 11 LeWeb, Douglas Atkin—Airbnb—LeWeb London 2013. 12 Leonard, “The Sharing Economy Gets Greedy.” 13 Bulajewski, “The Cult of Sharing.” 14 Cortese, “Loans That Avoid Banks?”

Geek Sublime: The Beauty of Code, the Code of Beauty
by Vikram Chandra
Published 7 Nov 2013

Rather, this new “virtual class” of digital overlords combine the social and sexual attitudes of San Francisco bohemianism with a neoliberal passion for idealized free markets and unchecked profit-making, thus producing a caste orthodoxy for people who might be best described as “hippie capitalists.” The media theorists Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron have usefully described this new faith as “the Californian Ideology,” which “promiscuously combines the free-wheeling spirit of the hippies and the entrepreneurial zeal of the yuppies. This amalgamation of opposites has been achieved through a profound faith in the emancipatory potential of the new information technologies.”40 This high-tech determinism dictates that through the new worldwide amalgamation of hardware and software, a frictionless “electronic agora” will come into being, allowing the profitable exchange of both goods and ideas.

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That they are usually undescribed in histories of Silicon Valley is just another instance of what a fiction history can be.85 Silicon Valley may have in reality needed Lanier’s salonnières and the Indian Mafia, but its heroic narrative—from which it draws its ambition, its adventurousness, and its seductiveness—requires lone American cowboys to ride the range. Toward the end of their critique of the Californian Ideology, Barbrook and Cameron remark in passing, “Any attempt to develop hypermedia [innovative forms of knowledge and communications] within Europe will need some of the entrepreneurial zeal and can-do attitude championed by the Californian New Right.” But it seems to me that you cannot get the can-do attitude and zeal without the ideology, without the shimmering dream of California, without the furious continent-conquering energy, the guns, the massacres, without the consequences—good and bad—of belief.

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Barrett, “Why We Don’t Hire .NET Programmers.” 34. Ibid. 35. Ibid. 36. Solnit, “Diary.” 37. Ibid. 38. See Lacy, “And You Thought SF Cabs Were Bad? BART Strike Is Crippling Fledgling Mid-Market Tech Corridor.” 39. Silver, “In Silicon Valley, Technology Talent Gap Threatens G.O.P. Campaigns.” 40. Barbrook and Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” 44. 41. Ibid., 55. 42. Matyszczyk, “Woz: Microsoft Might Be More Creative Than Apple.” 43. Torvalds, “Re: Stable Linux 2.6.25.10”; Leonard, “Let My Software Go!”; Raymond, “Microsoft Tries to Recruit Me.” 44. Bailey, “Dear Open Source Project Leader: Quit Being a Jerk.” 45. Alec Scott, e-mail to author, November 29, 2012. 46.

The Gig Economy: A Critical Introduction
by Jamie Woodcock and Mark Graham
Published 17 Jan 2020

This laid the organizational basis for wider business process outsourcing that has become today’s online outsourcing. However, globalization has not only meant the shifting of work and trade to different parts of the world, but also brought about a generalization of what Barbrook and Cameron (1996) have termed the ‘Californian Ideology’, referring to the encouragement of deregulated markets and powerful transnational corporations. While this is often linked to the rise of ‘cognitive capitalism’ (Moulier-Boutang, 2012) and the companies creating the software and platforms in Silicon Valley, it increasingly becomes a driver to open up markets in low- and middle-income countries too.

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The Invisible Worker, issue 1. Available at: https://theinvisibleworker.wordpress.com/reflections-on-writing-conspiracy-theories-by-adam-badger/ Balaram, B., Warden, J. and Wallace-Stephens, F. (2017) Good Gigs: A Fairer Future for the UK’s Gig Economy. London: RSA. Barbrook, R. and Cameron, A. (1996) The Californian ideology. Science as Culture, 6(1): 44–72. Beck, U. (1992) Risk Society: Towards a New Modernity. London: Sage. Benson, A., Sojourner, A. and Umyarov, A. (2015) ‘Can reputation discipline the gig economy? Experimental evidence from an online labor market’, IZA DP No. 9501. Available at: http://ftp.iza.org/dp9501.pdf Bent, P. (2017) Historical perspectives on precarious work: The cases of Egypt and India under British imperialism.

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Bezos’ letters 87–8, 106 Turkopticon 106–7, 123, 133 Anderson, B. 80 Antunes, Ricardo 36 application programming interfaces (API) 58 apps 5, 51, 52, 133, 138 artificial intelligence 50, 58, 60, 66 Aslam, Yaseen 76 assembly line 24, 94, 117 Australia 127 Australian Independent Contractors Act 128 automation 66–7 Avendano, Pablo 73 B Badger, Adam 86–7 Bangalore (India) 98–9, 102 Barbrook, R. 37 Barry, J. 49 Beck, Ulrich 17 Bent, P. 13, 16 Berg, J. 55 Besant, Annie 14 Bezos, Jeff 87 Bolt 77 Bourdieu, Pierre 17 ‘BrainWorkers’ 33 Braverman, Harry 111 Bryant and May match factory 14 C Californian Ideology 37 call centres 24, 31 outsourcing of 37, 54 Callinicos, Brent 49 Cameron, A. 37 Cant, Callum 40, 96 capitalism cognitive 37 gendered basis of 29 car industry 110 care work 64, 66, 79–83 low barriers to entry 67 and repeat transactions 68 Care.com 80, 80–1 casualization 5, 15 Caviar 73 ‘ChainWorkers’ 33 Cheung, Adora 103 China worker resistance and strikes 100 Christie, N. 73 cleaning work 5–6, 64 low barriers to entry 67 migrant workers 30 cloudworker platforms 6, 43, 53–61, 63, 64, 69, 93 atomization of 92 availability of 56 location of 55, 57 removal of barriers to entry for 69 and resistance 104–8 setting rates of pay 65 and spatial control 63 temporal control 64 cognitive capitalism 37 collaborations 123, 132, 136 collective bargaining 30, 34, 37, 49, 80, 130, 134, 135–6, 143 collective organization 100, 134 commercial content moderation (CCM) 61 computerization 66 consumer attitudes/preferences 27 contingent work 19 Convention on Platform Work, Draft 130, 146–51 cooperatives, platform 138–9 Countouris, N. 129 Craigslist 22 crowdsourcing 58 crowdworkers 55, 90 see also microwork; online freelancing D Dalla Costa, Mariarosa 29 Darcy, Alison 60 data collection 65–6 De Stefano, V. 129 deindustrialization 36, 84 Deliveroo 2, 6, 23, 32, 40, 71–4, 115, 127 experience of working for 7–8, 31, 71, 72–4 self-organization for workers 95 strike action 95–6, 97 delivery work(ers)/platforms 5, 27, 62, 63, 68 and automation 67 and collective organization 134 experiences of workers 71–5 low entry requirements 67 see also Deliveroo democratic ownership 136–40, 141 Denmark 3F trade union 134–5 Desai, Bhairavi 79 developing countries internet penetration rate 25 Didi Chuxing 22, 102 digital divides 25 digital legibility 23–5, 65–7 digital platforms 1, 2, 3, 4, 54–5 Directive on Transparent and Predictable Working Condition in the European Union 129 dock work(ers) 13–14, 15, 38 strike (1889) 15 domestic work(ers) 29–30, 62, 63, 66, 79–83 as central component of capitalism 29 factors determining working conditions 80 numbers 80 positive and negative outcomes for 81 and repeat transactions 68 in South Africa 81–3 Doogan, Kevin 18 E economic crisis (late 1970s) 33 Elance 22 entertainment industries 135 Eurobarometer 40 European Commission 35 Expensify 60 F Facebook 45, 60, 121, 123, 133 factories/factory work 15–16, 94 measuring of factory labour process by Taylor 23–4 Fair Crowd Work website 123 Fairwork Foundation project 121–2, 130, 146–51 Farrar, James 75, 75–6, 77–8, 101 feedback 52, 80, 92, 93 financial crisis (2008) 35 Fiverr 20, 23 flexibility, desire for by workers 4–5, 30–3, 71, 115 flexicurity 35 Flipkart 22 Foodora 127 Fordism 117 fragmented work 5, 40, 114 Freelancer 6, 54, 64, 89 freelancing, online see online freelancing Frey, C.B. 66 G gamification 86 gender and capitalism 29 and relationships of work 28–30 geographically tethered work/platforms 5–6, 7, 34, 50–2, 63 control over workforce 68 forms of resistance in 94–104 setting rates of pay 65 temporal control 64–5 Ghana 8, 64, 92 gig economy advantages 4–5 characteristics 114–15 controversy over classification of people involved 43–4 existence due to digital transformation 114 factors facilitating growth of 19, 114 five principles for ‘fair work’ in 122 future 112–45 governance in 62 meaning of 3–7 numbers working in 1–2 operation of 41–69 origins 11–40 pitfalls 5, 116 preconditions that shape the 19–28 rise of 38–40 ways to bring about change 142–4 gig economy workers barriers to entry for 67–8 communicating with each other 132–4 de-personalization of 118, 120 desire for flexibility 4–5, 31–3, 71, 115 experiences of 70–92 invisibility of 6, 80 lack of collective voice 6, 77 lack of effective regulation for 128–9 misclassified as self-employed 44 numbers 39–40 securing protection through courts 127 working conditions 6, 9 gigs, musical 3 Global North 12, 13, 32, 46 and cloudworkers 55 and microwork 84 and outsourcing 44 size of gig economy 39 Global South 32, 46 internet penetration rate 25 size of gig economy 39 women and online freelancing 90 globalization 19, 37–8 Goodwin, Tom 45, 121 Graeber, David 31 Guru.com 22 H Handy 80 Harvey, David 33, 53 Heeks, Richard 39 Herman, S. 39 Hilfr.dk 134–5 Homejoy 68, 103–4 Howe, J. 58 human intelligence tasks (HITs) 60 Humphries, S. 13–14 Hunt, A. 28, 81, 82 Huws, U. 39–40 I IAEA (International Arts and Entertainment Alliance) 135 Iles, Anthony 32 ILO (International Labour Organization) 16–17, 129 Declaration of Philadelphia (1944) 142 Independent Workers Union of Great Britain see IWGB India delivery drivers 74 strikes by Uber drivers 102 Industrial Workers of the Word see IWW industrialization 16 interface 45 International Arts and Entertainment Alliance see IAEA International Labour Organization see ILO Internet access and penetration rate 25 Irani, Lilly 106 IWGB (Independent Workers Union of Great Britain) 73, 97, 101, 109, 127, 134 IWW (Industrial Workers of the World) 97, 101 J James, Selma 29, 81 job insecurity, growth in 18–19 K Kalanick, Travis 23, 48, 49 Kalleberg, A.L. 18 Kenya Ajira Digital programme 35 Kessler, Sarah 11 L labour law 114, 117, 126, 128, 129 Lagos (Nigeria) 89, 124 Lanier, Jaron 58 LaPlante, Rochelle 60 lean platforms 35, 45 legibility, digital 23–5, 65–7 Li, Qi 100 Limer, Eric 85–6 Living Wage Foundation 122 London taxi arrangement 47 long-term unemployment 18 low-paid work, increase in 35, 139 M Machingura, F. 81, 82 McKinsey 1–2, 39 McKinsey Global Institute 66 Manila (Philippines) 89, 90 Maputo (Mozambique) 26–7 Marsh, Greg 129 Marx, Karl 11–12, 22, 72, 121 Mason, Paul 35 mass connectivity 25–7 Massey, Doreen 63 Matchwoman strike 14 Mateescu, A. 79, 80, 81 Messina, Jim 48–9 microwork 6, 55, 58–61, 62, 83–9, 104 and automation 66–7 experiences of workers 83–9 feelings of alienation 88 numbers engaged in 83–4 wages 84–5 see also Amazon Mechanical Turk 59 migrant workers 30, 80, 90 migration status 30 Mitropoulos, Angela 17, 32 mobile phones 25–6 Mondragon Corporation 138–9 Moody, Kim 40, 111 Moyer-Lee, Jason 98 N Nedelkoska, L. 66 neoliberalism 18, 33–5, 52 characteristics of 34 New York Uber 78–9 NHS (National Health Service) 5 Novogratz, Mike 49–50 O O’Connor vs Uber Technologies Inc. (2015) 124, 126 Ojanperä, Sanna 55 Ola 102 online freelancing 6, 7, 8–9, 43, 55, 62, 141 barriers to entry for workers 67 barriers to organizing 104 experiences of workers 89–92 and feedback 93 reasons for doing 89–90 support forums 104–5 wages 90, 91 and worker resistance 104–5 Osborne, M.A. 66 outcome thinking 118, 124 outsourcing 19, 37–8, 39, 44–5, 51, 54 microwork as extension of 58 P Pandor, Aisha 83 Pasha, Tanveer 102 pay rates, setting of 65 Peck, Jamie 33, 35 Peterloo Massacre (1819) 108 Platform Cooperative Consortium 138 platforms/platform work 2, 4 ability to set pay rates 65 and accountability 125–30 barriers to entry for workers 67–8 as a civic utility 139–40 cloudwork see cloudwork connecting workers and clients 20–1, 22–3, 43, 138 cooperatives 138–9 core functions 23 degree of explicit coordination 68–9 democratic ownership of 136–40, 141 digital legibility 23–5, 65–7 Draft Convention on Platform Work 130, 146–51 early 22 geographically tethered model see geographically tethered model infrastructure 20–3 intermediate function 42–3 lean 35, 45 meaning and operation of 42–6 microwork see microwork negotiation-based matching 22–3 reliance on network effects 45 repeat transactions 68 setting up of ‘counter’ 123 spatial control 62, 63–4 spatiality and temporality of 42–3 spending money on public relations and advertising 28 static-price matching 23 temporal control 64–5 understanding how they work 61–9 Plouffe, David 49 Pollman, E. 49 precariat 18 precarious work(ers) 13–19, 32–3, 38 definition 16–17 two kinds of 33 profitability, crisis of 35, 36, 42 public sector and gig economy 17 and outsourcing 44 Q Quintini, G. 66 R racialization of work 30 racism 30 ratings strategy and transparency 122–3 Ravenelle, Alexandrea 37, 70 Raw, Louise 14 Reagan, Ronald 34 reddit 123 regulation 144 lack of for gig economy workers 128–9 labour law 19, 114, 117, 126, 128 state 19, 33–6 regulatory entrepreneurship 49 repeat transactions and platforms 68 resistance see worker resistance Roberts, Sarah 61 S SAG-AFTRA 135 Samman, E. 28 Schifter, Doug 79 Scholz, Trebor 48, 49, 138, 139 Schor, Juliet 103 Screen Actors Guild (SAG) 135 Second World War 110 self-employment 32, 43–4, 96, 98, 108 Semuels, Alana 84 service industries, growth of 34 Seymour, Richard 18–19 sharing economy 11 Shekhawat, Dushyant 74 ‘shock doctrine’ 34 short term contracts 4 Silberman, Six 106 slavery 30 Slee, Tom 50, 78 soldiering 23 South Africa domestic workers in 81–3 Uber 76, 127–8 worker resistance 99–100 South African Domestic Services and Allied Workers Union (SADSAWU) 82–3 South African Labour Relations Act 128 South Korea 35 South London Gas Workers strike (1889) 14–15 Spain 127 spatial control and platforms 62, 63–4 Srnicek, Nick 4, 42, 45 standard employment relationship 5, 12–13, 16, 18, 32, 33–4 Standing, Guy 17–18, 27 state regulation 19, 33–6 strikes 14–15, 94, 95–6, 99–100, 109, 142–3 preconditions for starting 109 surveillance 24 of delivery drivers 74 Upwork workers’ resistance to 105 Susskind, R. 118 SweepSouth 80, 81–3 Switzerland Notime 102 T TaskRabbit 103 taxi industry 51–2 taxi work(ers) 75–9, 134 and collective organization 134 see also Uber Taylor, Bill 100 Taylor, Frederick 23–4 Taylor, Matthew 129 Taylor Review of Modern Working Practices, The 129 technological changes 19, 21 temporal control and platforms 64–5 temporary work(ers) 3, 17 Thatcher, Margaret 34 Thompson, S. 34 Ticona, J. 79, 80, 81 Tillett, Ben 14 tipping 75 Tolpuddle Martyrs 108–9 trade unions 6, 18, 34, 36, 92–3, 97, 108–9, 134, 135, 143–4 decline of 36, 37 and dock workers 15 early 108–9 and gig economy workers 109–10, 136 and IWGB 97 rise in membership 15 textile 108 Transnational Federation of Couriers 97 transparency 118–24, 141 establishment of ‘counter platforms’ 123 ratings strategy 122–3 Transport for London 28 Turkopticon 106–7, 123, 133 U Uber 2, 4, 20, 23, 25, 32, 44, 45, 46–50, 52, 61, 73–9, 94–5, 108, 115, 121, 124, 139 business model 48 Change.org petition 28 data collection 50, 65–6 drivers’ wages 49–50, 77–8 engagement with regulation and transport policy 48 funding 47–8 and ‘greyballing’ 49 in New York 78–9 O’Connor vs Uber Technologies Inc. (2015) 124, 126 power passengers hold over drivers 75–6 public relations and lobbying campaigns 48–9 rating system 75 safety issues and rising petrol prices for drivers in South Africa 76–7 and self-driving vehicles 50 and tipping 75 Uber International Holding(s) BV 128 Uber Technologies SA 127 UberX 47 worker resistance and strikes 100–2 unfair dismissal 44, 134 United Kingdom employment regulation issues 129 neoliberalism 34 and outsourcing 44–5 worker resistance and strikes 100–1 United Private Hire Drivers (UPHD) 75 United States neoliberalism 34 Uber 47–9 UPHD (United Private Hire Drivers) 76, 101 UpWork 6, 8, 43, 54, 64, 121 resistance of surveillance methods by workers 105 Upwork.com 89, 91 US Chamber of Commerce 108 V van Doorn, Niels 42 Vandaele, Kurt 95, 97 venture capital 36 visibility 136 vWorker 22 W wages microworkers 84–5 online freelancing 90, 91 setting of pay rates 65 Uber drivers 49–50, 77–8 Ward, H. 73 Webster, G.E. 16 Weightman, G.E. 13–14 WhatsApp 95, 99, 123, 132, 133 Williams, Eric 30 women and domestic work 29–30 and online freelancing in the Global South 90 Wood, Alex 95, 104–5, 107 work, transformation of 12–13 worker power 19, 36–7, 130–6, 141 worker resistance 93–111, 113–14 and cloudworkers 104–8 and communication 107 food platform strikes 95–7 formation of networks and meetings 95, 98–9 geographically tethered work 94–104 history of 94 legal battles over employment status 98 and online freelancing 104–5 and self-employment status 98 strikes 14–15, 94, 95–6, 99, 100–1 taking of work off-platform 103 and trade unions 97, 107–11 Uber 101–2 and WhatsApp groups 98, 99, 132 workers’ rights 34, 44, 98, 101, 130, 135, 139, 140, 144 Y YouTube 60 Z Zomato 98–9 POLITY END USER LICENSE AGREEMENT Go to www.politybooks.com/eula to access Polity’s ebook EULA.

The Refusal of Work: The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work
by David Frayne
Published 15 Nov 2015

This new ethos sees aspects of workers’ personalities that were previously barred or ignored by their employers being dragged into the workplace. ‘Being yourself’ and ‘having fun’ are emphasised, and organisations’ earlier attempts to create uniform work cultures and a high level of identification with company values are written off as crude and passé. This new ethos is sometimes referred to as the ‘Californian ideology’, owing to its prevalence in America’s Silicon Valley. In the UK, it is perhaps epitomised by the (albeit extreme) example of London’s coveted Google offices, which comprise a sort of playground featuring beanbags, allotments, chill-out zones and an old-fashioned sitting room, designed to allow employees to ‘work from home’ whilst remaining in the office.

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A human resource manager awkwardly bumbles: Every 3Fs activity we undertake is implemented in a controlled way and adherence is mandatory – although individualism and creativity are encouraged … we have one Sunray attitude … um … but people can still be themselves. (Fleming and Sturdy, 2011: 191) It ultimately seems that the much-touted freedom of the Californian ideology is a superficial, carefully administered kind of freedom, which takes place within strict boundaries. To borrow some of Fleming and Sturdy’s examples: it is a freedom to have a unique hair colour, wear a short skirt, or display a surfboard in your cubicle, but not to have a real influence over the labour process.

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Index * * * A achievement, social, measured through work, 15 Adam, a former computer programmer, 120, 127–8, 138–41, 170, 180 Adorno, Theodor, 69–72, 75, 76–7, 162; ‘Free Time’, 69 advertising, 85–8, 171; spending of industry, 88 affluence, ideals of, 181 agoraphobia, 152, 153 Alan, a former office administrator, 157–8 alienating tendencies, use of term, 62 alienation, 9, 48, 50, 61, 62, 63, 90, 93, 126, 146, 178, 200, 230; in Marx, 46, 47; normalisation of, 52; use of term, 51 alternatives: experimenting in, 223; utopian, 145 altruism, 113 Amazon, working conditions at, 51 anger management techniques, 53 Anne, a photographer, 127, 170; co-founder of Idlers’ Alliance, 207–8 anti-consumerist ethics, 163 anxiety, 13, 148, 151, 152, 164, 200; about education, 79; in face of consumer choices, 168 apricots, cultivation of, 79 Arendt, Hannah, 24, 39 Aristotle, concept of good life, 4 art of living, 4 Ashton, John, 229 ATOS company, 104; scandal regarding, 152 autonomous activities, 20 autonomous self-development, 36; right of, 35 autonomously organised production, 112 autonomy, 10, 29, 64, 91, 113, 141, 142, 150, 198, 205, 210–37; in work, limits to, 61–6; moral, 155; of workers, 69 B bakeries, production process in, 51–2 Basic Income, 225; as personal entitlement, 226; universal and unconditional, 225 Bauman, Zygmunt, 73, 159–60, 169–70 Beck, Ulrich, 73 being, mode of being, 79–80, 166 ‘being yourself’’ in work, 59–60 Bell, Daniel, 26 Ben, husband of Cheryl, 178, 179 benefit fraud, claimed costs of, 101 benefits, conditionalities of, 104 Berardi, Franco, 54–5, 81 Berger, Peter, 125, 128, 130, 144; with Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of Reality, 125 Beveridge, William, 28 Billig, Michael, 231 binary dichotomies in society, 99 biomedical labels: adoption of, 151–2; resistance to, 152, 153 black working class, rebellion of, 115 Black, Bob, The Abolition of Work, 206 Black, Carol, 108 Blauner, Robert, 48, 62 body, starts shouting, 149 see also broken body books: from libraries, 206; on subject of work, 206–7; reading of, 175, 195 boredom at work, 12, 140 Bowring, Finn, 116, 171 Braverman, Harry, 48 breakpoints, 125, 128, 129, 141, 142, 154, 216; causes of, 129; relating to personal health issues, 148 Brennan, Teresa, 148 Bridge, Angela, 189–90 broken body, 147–54 Brown, Philip, 42 Bruce, a former care home worker, 137, 146, 148–51, 200, 202, 203, 204 ‘bullshit jobs’, 40 bureaucracy at work, 132; intensification of, 133 Burroughs, William, 206 C ‘Californian ideology’, 59; boundaries of, 60 call centres, labour practices in, 50–1 calmer life, living of, 151 Calvin, John, 25 Cameron, David, 99 Cannon, David, 154–5, 233 capitalism, 24, 37, 44, 48, 64, 65–6, 147; as production of needs, 85; development of, 25–6, 29, 39–40; fixated on work and consumption, 3, 4; industrial, 30; insecurity in, 73; potential reduction of working time in, 32–3; resistance to, 188; spirit of, 25–6 career, concept of, 127 Casey, Catherine, 16–17, 56–7, 58, 212 casual labour, 28 Cederström, Carl, and Peter Fleming, Dead Man Working, 55 Chaplin, Charlie, in Modern Times, 49 character assessment of workers, 56 cheese, buying of, 169 Cheryl, an interviewee, 120, 165–7, 176–7, 178 child-friendly policies, 116 childcare, 155, 206, 211 children, a factor in decision-making, 161 chirpiness, required in job, 136 Christmas, celebration of, 145, 186 cinema attendance, moral panic regarding, 96 Citizens Advice Bureau, 153 city spaces, privatisation and commercialisation of, 222 claimants, viewed as wasters, 99 claiming benefits, viewed as game, 135 Clive, an interviewee 201 clubbing together to get something done, 22 cognitive labour, 54–5 Cohen, Stanley, 126, 127, 129, 210 Cole, Matthew, 106, 205 collaborative forms of work, 64 Collinson, David, 213 colonisation of life: by economic demands, 9, 93; by work-related demands, 67–94 commodification, 92 commodity-intensive lifestyle, questioning of, 164 commons, abolition of, 186 commuting, costs of, 178 company people, creation of, 56 computerisation, of bakery, 51–2 computers, 50, 61, 72, 139–40, 172, 175, 177; gaming, 177 conditions of work, 226, 233 ‘constantly on call’, 72 consumer motivation, theories of, 88–91 consumer satisfaction, 85 consumer society, 26–7 consumerism, 40, 83–4, 91, 162–3, 169, 214, 228, 231; costs of, 160; depends on exploitation, 167; ethically conscious, 87; motivation for, 85, 178 consumers: needs of, exaggerated, 92; persuasion of, 86 consuming less, 172, 187 consumption: de-spiritualisation of, 176; gospel of, 82–94; growth of, 94; ostentatious, 186; replaces self-production, 92; therapeutic, 180 convenience, need for, 178–9 convenience commodities, consumption of, 91 conversation, love of, 137–8, 141 conviviality, as valued good, 116 cooking of meals, 145; pleasures of, 176–7, 187 coping strategies at work, 11 Coupland, Douglas, Generation X, 114 Cremin, Colin, 58, 76 customer complaints procedures, 54 CVs, preparation of, 75 cynicism, 12, 212–13 D Dalla Costa, Mariarosa, 115 dead end, experience of, 141 death, witnessing of, 130 debt, of students, 81 decentralisation of work, 32 deindustrialisation, 107 ‘delusions’ of workers regarding work, 21, 22 democracy, 215; engagement in, 222; in the workplace, 13 denaturalisation of work, 17, 216 Department of Trade and Industry (UK), work–life balance study, 218 dependency, alleged culture of, 100 depression, 148, 152 de-reification, 128, 144 desires, consumerist, pursuit of, 170 deskilling of work, 42, 48 diet, simplicity of, 136 dignity, 137, 193 disabilities see people with disabilities disability allowances, 152, 153 discipline at work, 28 discreditable, 200–1 dis-ease, feeling of, 130 disengagement from work, 47–52 dis-identification, 213 dissatisfaction, organised creation of, 85 distribution of income, 14 Dittmar, Helga, 88 division of labour, 28, 29, 48, 133, 146; gendered, 229–30 ‘doing nothing of value’, 141, 190, 233 domestic work, 19 see also outsourcing of domestic work downshifter, use of term, 120 downshifter study in USA, 165 Dubi, Steve, 46 Duncan Smith, Ian, 102 E eating together: pleasure of, 143, 144, 147; whittled away, 176 economic growth, 34, 37 education, 78; aims of, 80; anxiety context of, 79; as certification for work, 69; as socialisation, 15; broad, value of, 79; investment in, 42 eight-hour day, 71 Eleanor, an interviewee, 120, 124, 129, 144, 161–2, 167–8, 182, 183, 207 Emma, an interviewee, 196–7, 198–9, 202–3 emotional conduct, management of, 62 emotional investment, in office work, 136 emotional labour, 52–3, 57, 137 emotions, management of, 53–4 employability, 6, 9, 15, 16, 81, 82; discipline demanded by, 77–8; pressure of, 73–82 employee appraisals, 54 employers, 76–7 Employment Support Allowance (ESA), 148, 153 employment, paid see paid employment encirclement by the market, 92 ‘end of work’, argument, 33, 35, 36, 82 Engels, Friedrich, 74 entitlement, alleged culture of, 100, 103, 232 environmental awareness, 168 escapes, 129; construction of, 12 escapism, 10, 27, 210–37 ethical reflection, need for, 217 ethically dubious work, 135 see also worthwhile ethic eudaemonia, 4 Euro May Day movement, 115 exclusion, social, 161 extra hours, working of, 57 F Facebook, 88 factories, closure of, 106–8 family, work as, 56–7 family life: importance of, 230; prioritising of, 218 feminism, 22; interest in shorter working hours, 229; second-wave, 114–15 Fevre, Ralph, 106 Ffion, an interviewee, 145, 167, 170, 177, 181 Fisher, Mark, 214, 229 five-day week, 97 Fleming, Peter, 59–61, 64, 212–13 Fletcher, Harrell, 189 flight attendants, working conditions of, 53 ‘flow state’ condition, 12 Ford, Henry, 95 Ford assembly line, 48 foreign encounters, power of, 144 four-day week, recommended for public health reasons, 229 Fourier, Charles, 30–1 France, 35-hour week legislation in, 223–4 Frankfurt School, 2, 35 Franklin, Benjamin, 28 free choice of work, 31 free-time, 29, 33, 39, 40, 69–72, 123, 155, 157, 221, 228; as continuation of work, 72; as valued good, 116; authentic, 82; ‘excessive’, 83; experience of, 162; fragmentation of, 71, 73; increase of, 38; preservation of, 24; reabsorption of, 84; scarcity of, 41, 173, 175 freedom from work, 38 freelance work, 155 friendliness, simulation of, 54 Fromm, Erich, 79, 80, 166 Fryer, D., 109 full-time working, 90, 110–11, 141; resistance to, 28, 29 fun, culture of, in work, 59–60, 62, 213, 232 G Galbraith, J.

Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain: Bitcoin, Blockchain, Ethereum & Smart Contracts
by David Gerard
Published 23 Jul 2017

Computer programmers are highly susceptible to the just world fallacy (that their economic good fortune is the product of virtue rather than circumstance) and the fallacy of transferable expertise (that being competent in one field means they’re competent in others). Silicon Valley has always been a cross of the hippie counterculture and Ayn Rand-based libertarianism (this cross being termed the “Californian ideology”). “Cyberlibertarianism” is the academic term for the early Internet strain of this ideology. Technological expertise is presumed to trump all other forms of expertise, e.g., economics or finance, let alone softer sciences. “I don’t understand it, but it must be simple” is the order of the day.

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133 Bloomberg 117 Branwen, Gwern 60, 64, 72 Bretton Woods 20 Bridges, Shaun 53 brockchainbrockshize 108 BTC38 99 bubble 35, 81, 88, 94, 139 Budovsky, Arthur 18 Buffett, Jimmy 40 Burning Chrome 19 Buterin, Vitalik 86, 94, 96, 103, 119 Buttcoin Foundation 27, 56 Butterfly Labs 39, 56 Byrne, Patrick 76 C01N 65 Californian ideology 18 Cards Against Humanity 75 Cellan-Jones, Rory 67 Chain Core 123 Charles Sturt University 61 Chaum, David 19 Citrix 73 cloud mining 39 Cloudcroft 65 Cloudflare 44 Cobban, Cédric 135 CODE 136 coin doubler 38 Coin.mx 74 Coinbase 74, 81, 82 CoinDesk 122 coingen.io 91 CoinLab 47 cold wallet 12 consensus model 91, 119 ConsenSys 129, 136 Conversation, The 62 Cooper, Charley 111 Corda 123 Crypto Anarchist Manifesto 19 cryptocurrency 11 Cryptography and Cryptography Policy (mailing list) 20, 23 CryptoLocker 73 Cryptonomicon 19 Cryptowat.ch 83 Cryptsy 44 Cunk, Philomena 124 Curecoin 91 cyberlibertarianism 17 cyberpunk 19 Cypherpunks 19, 62 Cyprus 32 DafuqCoin 91 Dai, Wei 19, 65 DAO, The 105, 108, 122, 135 dapp 94 darknet 37, 48, 69, 70, 71 decentralisation 25, 112 DeMorgan 63 DigiCash 19 Digital Asset Holdings 121, 122 Digital Catapult 125, 134 Digital Rights Management 127, 135 Digix 98 distributed ledger technology 111, 131 Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain 123 Doernberg, Ben 93 Dogecoin 92 Dogecoin Foundation 93 dot.blockchain 135 Dr.

Digital Empires: The Global Battle to Regulate Technology
by Anu Bradford
Published 25 Sep 2023

However, the techno-libertarian thinking that has emanated from California has not been shaped by the Silicon Valley engineers, the startup founders, the venture capitalists, or Stanford University alone. Instead, it stems from diverse communities knit together by their shared optimism 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, hackers, community media activists, and capitalists—shared a profound faith in the “emancipatory potential” embedded in information technologies.6 Given its diverse foundation, the American market-driven model thus extends beyond traditional neoliberal thinking.

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These varied groups were united in their goals by their distrust of authorities, hierarchies, and government, and coalesced around the idea that technology allows them to transcend the existing dominant institutions.7 For the left-leaning techno-libertarians, technology offered a way to empower individuals and community activists at the expense of corporate and bureaucratic elites.8 Several prominent scholars, including Yochai Benkler, and influential NGOs, such the Electronic Frontier Foundation, advanced their techno-optimist argument from the political left, emphasizing the internet’s potential to enhance individual freedom and civil liberties.9 For the right-leaning proponents of the market-driven model, technology presented the opportunity to weaken big government and entrench their laissez faire ideology by reducing the power of the 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 Even with its faith in markets and reliance on venture capital, there is more to the American techno-libertarian spirit than sheer profit-making.

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National governments have no moral right or legal authority to impose their laws on this space that is detached from state sovereignty, Barlow proclaims. The internet is a self-ordering place that forms 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 than the world your governments have made before.” The Declaration advances a vision that the internet cannot, and should not, be regulated. Numerous scholars, commentators, and political leaders have since endorsed this view, and it is a perspective that has played an important role in shaping the American regulatory model.17 There are several strands to these anti-regulation arguments.

Surveillance Valley: The Rise of the Military-Digital Complex
by Yasha Levine
Published 6 Feb 2018

Ignoring their policies for welfare cutbacks, the magazine is instead mesmerized by their enthusiasm for the libertarian possibilities offered by new information technologies,” wrote Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron in their influential 1995 essay, “The Californian Ideology.” Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Mute Magazine, September 1995, http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology. 102. The Electronic Frontier Foundation was founded by Lotus Notes creator Mitch Kapor, cattle rancher and Grateful Dead songwriter John Perry Barlow, and early Sun Microsystems employee John Gilmore. It started out with a vague mission: to defend people’s civil liberties on the Internet and to “find a way of preserving the ideology of the 1960s” in the digital era.

Ways of Being: Beyond Human Intelligence
by James Bridle
Published 6 Apr 2022

For the military origins of the internet, see Yasha Levine, Surveillance Valley: The Secret Military History of the Internet (London: Icon Books, 2019). For a critique of Silicon Valley neoliberalism, see Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, ‘The Californian Ideology’, Mute, 1(3), 1 September 1995; http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/californian-ideology. 22. I. O. Buss, ‘Bird Detection by Radar’, The Auk, 63(3), 1 July 1946, pp. 315–18; https://doi.org/10.2307/4080116. 23. For an account of Varley and Lack’s work, see A. D. Fox and P. D. L. Beasley, ‘David Lack and the Birth of Radar Ornithology’, Archives of Natural History, 37(2), October 2010, pp. 325–32.

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This problem is compounded by our technologies, particularly when they originate in war and violence, as most of our contemporary technologies do. The internet is a clear example of this: it emerged from the twin poles of Cold War paranoia – distributed networks designed to withstand atomic attack and the Californian Ideology, which in the 1990s traded the hippy ideals of liberation and togetherness for technological determinism and neoliberal capitalism.21 It’s this combination of military power and corporate profit-seeking which has shaped the modern internet, writing structural violence and surveillance capitalism into its source code.

The Twittering Machine
by Richard Seymour
Published 20 Aug 2019

The ability to lie about ourselves was thought to bring freedom, creative autonomy, escape from surveillance. Lying was the great equalizer. Silicon Valley, as it 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 free market of ideas. This connection between lying and creative freedom is not as strange as it may appear. Milan Kundera, reflecting on Stalinist tyranny, argued that the injunction not to lie was one that could never be made to an equal because we have no right to demand answers from equals.73 Indeed, it is only when we acquire the capacity to lie that we really discover freedom of thought: since only then can we be sure that the authorities can’t read our minds.

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Milan Kundera, reflecting on Stalinist tyranny, argued that the injunction not to lie was one that could never be made to an equal because we have no right to demand answers from equals.73 Indeed, it is only when we acquire the capacity to lie that we really discover freedom of thought: since only then can we be sure that the authorities can’t read our minds. It is only when we can lie about the future, the constructivists exhorted in 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 reduced to brute fact, to technologies with unprecedented and unforeseen powers of physical manipulation by means of information bombardment. We naively think of ourselves as either ‘information rich’ or ‘information poor’.

The Politics of Bitcoin: Software as Right-Wing Extremism
by David Golumbia
Published 25 Sep 2016

.: O’Reilly Media. Aziz, John. 2013. “Is Inflation Always and Everywhere a Monetary Phenomenon?” Azizonomics (March 10). http://azizonomics.com/. —. 2014. “Why Won’t Inflation Conspiracy Theories Just Die Already?” The Week (August 14). http://theweek.com/. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. 1996. “The Californian Ideology.” Science as Culture 6, no. 1: 44–72. Barlow, John Perry. 1996. “A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace.” Electronic Frontier Foundation. http://projects.eff.org/. Bauwens, Michel. 2014. “A Political Evaluation of Bitcoin.” P2P Foundation (September 9). https://blog.p2pfoundation.net/.

Artificial Whiteness
by Yarden Katz

Max Tegmark, Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence (New York: Knopf, 2017), 119.     2.   Toni Morrison, Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, William E. Massey, Sr., Lectures in the History of American Civilization (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 63.     3.   Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture 6, no. 1 (1996): 44–72.     4.   Tegmark, Life 3.0.     5.   Jürgen Schmidhuber, “True Artificial Intelligence Will Change Everything,” Keynote lecture at European Communication Summit, July 7, 2016.     6.   Tegmark, Life 3.0, 240, 246.     7.   Kyle Wiggers, “Google Will Open an AI Center in Ghana Later This Year, Its First in Africa,” VentureBeat, June 13, 2018.     8.   

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Bloomberg, May 18, 2018. Bakare, Lanre. “Barack Obama Reveals His Cultural Highlights of 2018, from Roma to Zadie Smith.” Guardian, December 28, 2018. Baldwin, James. “Stranger in the Village.” In Notes of a Native Son, 159–75. Boston: Beacon Press, 1955. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. “The Californian Ideology.” Science as Culture 6, no. 1 (1996): 44–72. Barhat, Vikram. “China Is Determined to Steal A.I. Crown from US and Nothing, Not Even a Trade War, Will Stop It.” CNBC, May 4, 2018. Baudrillard, Jean. Simulacra and Simulation. Trans. Sheila Faria Glaser. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

Platform Capitalism
by Nick Srnicek
Published 22 Dec 2016

Finally, a number of analyses report on how poor the smart economy is for workers and how digital labour represents a shift in the relationship between workers and capital, but they leave aside any analysis of broader economic trends and intercapitalist competition.2 The present book aims to supplement these other perspectives by giving an economic history of capitalism and digital technology, while recognising the diversity of economic forms and the competitive tensions inherent in the contemporary economy. The simple wager of the book is that we can learn a lot about major tech companies by taking them to be economic actors within a capitalist mode of production. This means abstracting from them as cultural actors defined by the values of the Californian ideology, or as political actors seeking to wield power. By contrast, these actors are compelled to seek out profits in order to fend off competition. This places strict limits on what constitutes possible and predictable expectations of what is likely to occur. Most notably, capitalism demands that firms constantly seek out new avenues for profit, new markets, new commodities, and new means of exploitation.

Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life
by Adam Greenfield
Published 29 May 2017

Think Again,” New York Times, August 10, 2016. 12.CBS News, “Amazon Unveils Futuristic Plan: Delivery by Drone,” 60 Minutes, December 1, 2013. 13.Ben Popper, “Amazon’s drone program acquires a team of Europe’s top computer vision experts,” The Verge, May 10, 2016. 14.Danielle Kucera, “Amazon Acquires Kiva Systems in Second-Biggest Takeover,” Bloomberg, March 19, 2012. 15.Mike Rogoway, “Amazon Reports Price of Elemental Acquisition: $296 Million,” Oregonian, October 23, 2015. 16.Caleb Pershan, “Startup Doze Monetizes Nap Time for Tired Techies,” SFist, September 28, 2015; Kate Taylor, “Food-Tech Startup Soylent Snags $20 Million in Funding,” Entrepreneur, January 15, 2015; Michelle Starr, “Brain-to-Brain Verbal Communication in Humans Achieved for the First Time,” CNet, September 3, 2014; Frank Tobe, “When Will Sex Robots Hit the Marketplace?,” The Robot Report, June 8, 2016. 17.Mathew Honan, “Apple Drops ‘Computer’ from Name,” MacWorld, January 9, 2007. 18.Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Mute, September 1, 1995. 19.Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli, The New Global Rulers: The Privatization of Regulation in the World Economy, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011. 20.Ashlee Vance and Brad Stone, “A Little Chip Designed by Apple Itself,” The New York Times, February 1, 2010. nytimes.com/2010/02/02/technology/business-computing/02chip.html 21.

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., 103 Brown, Joshua, 223–4, 254 Brown, Michael, 231 “buddy punching,” 198 bullshit jobs, 203, 205 Bui, Quoctrung, 192–3 bushido, 266–7 Bushido Project, the, 266 Business Microscope, 197 Buterin, Vitalik, 147–50, 152, 154, 162–4, 167, 169, 172, 175, 177, 179, 303, 311 Byzantium, 69 CAD-Coin, 157 Californian Ideology, the, 283 Carmack, John, 82 cartography, 20 cats, 214 CCTV, 49–50, 54, 241 cellular automata, 86 Champs-Élysées, 1 Chaum, David, 121 Checkpoint Charlie, 70 chess, 263 Chevrolet Camaro, 216–18 Chicago Police Department, 230–1 China, 87, 102, 190, 194, 278–9, 286, 290, 306 Churchill, Winston, 28 circular economy, 92, 96, 99, 288 Ciutat Meridiana, Barcelona neighborhood, 109 climax community, 289 Cockney rhyming slang, 311 code library, 274–5 commons, the, 171–3 computer numerical control, CNC milling, 86, 93, 95, 97, 108, 110, 273 Container Store, 196 cooperatives, 171 cooperative motility, 80 Copenhagen, 31, 51 Cornell Law School, 151 Cortana virtual assistant, 39 Costco, 45 cozy catastrophe, 291 cradle-to-cradle industrial ecosystem.

Open Standards and the Digital Age: History, Ideology, and Networks (Cambridge Studies in the Emergence of Global Enterprise)
by Andrew L. Russell
Published 27 Apr 2014

Phillips Papers, Charles Babbage Institute, Minneapolis, Minnseota, Box 1, Folder 2. 57 Bryan Pfaffenberger, “The Social Meaning of the Personal Computer: Or, Why the Personal Computer Revolution Was No Revolution,” Anthropological Quarterly 61 (1988): 39–47; Paulina Borsook, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001); Markoff, What the Dormouse Said; Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture 6 (1996): 44–72. 58 Coll, Deal of the Century, 373–4. 59 Henck and Strassburg, A Slippery Slope, 255. 60 Coll, Deal of the Century, 369. 61 Ian M. Lifchus, “Standards Committee T1 – Telecommunications,” IEEE Communications Magazine 23 (1985): 34–37; Arthur K.

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Andrew Updegrove, “Standard Setting Organizations and Standard List,” http://www.consortiuminfo.org/links/linksall.php (accessed September 25, 2013). See more generally David E. Nye, “Shaping Communication Networks: Telegraph, Telephone, Computer,” Social Research 64 (1997): 1067–1091; Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Science as Culture 6 (1996): 44–72; Paulina Borsook, Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (New York: PublicAffairs, 2001); Pekka Himanen, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age (New York: Random House, 2001); Fred Turner, From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006).

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 7 Sep 2022

Thanks to Marina Gorbis and the Institute for the Future for your wisdom and counsel. Thanks to Mark Stahlman and the Center for the Study of Digital Life for your probes and provocations. I am indebted to Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, who first identified what I’m calling “The Mindset” in their 1995 essay, “The Californian Ideology.” I am also grateful to Mark Dery, who foresaw much of the lunacy I’ve chronicled here in his 1996 book, Escape Velocity . Thanks to Nora Bateson, Reverend Billy, Stephen Brent, Luke Burgis, Amber Case, Jamie Cohen, Yael Eisenstat, Frank Faranda, Nate Hagens, HC, Renee Hobbs, Brian Hughes, Xeni Jardin, Naomi Klein, Irwin Kula, Jeremy Lent, Mark Pesce, Sarah Pessin, Vicki Robin, Philip Rosedale, Rachel Rosenfelt, Micah Sifry, Suzanne Slomin, Fred Turner, Ari Wallach, Charles Yao, Tyson Yunkaporta, and David Zweig for your brilliance, friendship, and honesty.

The People's Platform: Taking Back Power and Culture in the Digital Age
by Astra Taylor
Published 4 Mar 2014

,” Foreign Policy, September 13, 2013. 10. See Frances Saunders, The Cultural Cold War (New York: The New Press, 2001) and the afterword to the Canongate edition of Lewis Hyde’s The Gift. 11. For the classic take on libertarianism and Silicon Valley see Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, “The Californian Ideology,” Alamut, August 1999. More recently George Packer, David Golumbia, and others have written on the topic. 12. For more on the history and funding of the Internet, see Part One and Part Four of James Curran, Natalie Fenton, and Des Freedman, Misunderstanding the Internet (London: Routledge, 2012).

The New Class Conflict
by Joel Kotkin
Published 31 Aug 2014

Wright Mills, The Power Elite (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1956), p. 123; John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971), pp. 12, 61. 40. Dirk Hanson, The New Alchemists: Silicon Valley and the Microelectronics Revolution (Boston: Little Brown, 1982).pp. 84, 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 Wealth in the History of the Planet, 2nd ed. (Palo Alto, CA: Omniware Group, 2013). 44. Anna Lee Saxenian, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1994). 45.

The Digital Party: Political Organisation and Online Democracy
by Paolo Gerbaudo
Published 19 Jul 2018

Bibliography Alvarez, R.M., and T.E. Hall. Electronic elections: the perils and promises of. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010. Arendt, Hannah. The origins of totalitarianism, Vol. 244. Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1973. Barbrook, Richard, and Andy Cameron. ‘The Californian ideology.’ Science as Culture 6, no.1 (1996): 44–72. Beck, Ulrich, and Elisabeth Beck-Gernsheim. Individualization: institutionalized individualism and its social and political consequences. London; Thousand Oaks, CA; New Delhi: Sage, 2002, pp.291–318. Bauman, Zygmunt. The individualized society.

Radicals Chasing Utopia: Inside the Rogue Movements Trying to Change the World
by Jamie Bartlett
Published 12 Jun 2017

.), Public Administration in the Information Age: Revisited (IOS Press, 2013). Also see Evgeny Morozov, To Save Everything, Click Here (Allen 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 critique. 7. James Politi, ‘Lunch with the FT: Beppe Grillo’, Financial Times, July 2015, http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/55d3242a-2bb2-11e5-8613-e7aedbb7bdb7.html (accessed 9 August 2016). 8.

The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom
by Evgeny Morozov
Published 16 Nov 2010

Armitage, J. “Resisting the Neoliberal Discourse of Technology: The Politics of Cyberculture in the Age of the Virtual Class.” CTHEORY 1 (1999). Balabanian, N. “On the Presumed Neutrality of Technology.” IEEE Technology and Society Magazine 25, no. 4 (2006): 15-25. Barbrook, R., and A. Cameron. “The Californian Ideology.” Science as Culture 6, no. 1 (1996): 44-72. Barley, S. R. “What Can We Learn from the History of Technology?” Journal of Engineering and Technology Management 15, no. 4 (1998): 237-255. Behringer, W. “Introduction: Communication in Historiography.” German History 24, no. 3 (2006): 325. Beniger, James R.

Your Computer Is on Fire
by Thomas S. Mullaney , Benjamin Peters , Mar Hicks and Kavita Philip
Published 9 Mar 2021

Bill Wasik, “Welcome to the Age of Digital Imperialism,” New York Times (June 4, 2015), https://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/07/magazine/welcome-to-the-age-of-digital-imperialism.html. 34. Phillipson, “Realities and Myths of Linguistic Imperialism,” 238. 35. Audrey Watters, “Technology Imperialism, the Californian Ideology, and the Future of Higher Education,” Hack Education (October 15, 2015), accessed May 9, 2018, http://hackeducation.com/2015/10/15/technoimperialism. 36. “Usage of Content Languages for Websites,” W3Techs, accessed March 31, 2018, W3techs.com/technologies/overview/content_language/all. 37.

The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
by Margaret O'Mara
Published 8 Jul 2019

Other important connectors in the Internet-age Valley salon were Tim O’Reilly and Stewart Alsop, each of whom built influential empires around annual conferences and publications aimed at the industry. 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 a Government that Works Better and Costs Less (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1993). Silicon Valley also played a role in this plank of the Clinton-Gore agenda; the Vice President hailed Sunnyvale (whose then mayor was Larry Stone) as a national example of and test bed for municipal reinvention, and several policies originating there became final recommendations of the performance review. 5.