A Quarter Century After Cyberselfish, Big Tech Proves Borsook Right

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Why Purism’s Privacy-First Model Matters Now More Than Ever

Paulina Borsook’s critique of big tech – featured in The New York Times on November 27th, is consistent with Purism’s long-standing ethos of promoting privacy in our digital lives.

In her book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of Silicon Valley, published in 2000, Borsook who is based in Palo Alto, California and has previously written for *Wired *and a host of other industry publications, took aim at what she saw as disturbing …

About
Latest Posts

Purism

Beautiful, Secure, Privacy-Respecting Laptops, Tablets, PCs, and Phones

Why Purism’s Privacy-First Model Matters Now More Than Ever

Paulina Borsook’s critique of big tech – featured in The New York Times on November 27th, is consistent with Purism’s long-standing ethos of promoting privacy in our digital lives.

She wrote,”…the most virulent form of philosophical technolibertarianism is a kind of scary, psychologically brittle, prepolitical autism.” She is also quoted as saying, “PC-based libertarianism … is the mind-set of adolescents, with their deep wish for total rampaging autonomy and desire for simple, call-to-arms passionate politics, where Good and Bad are clearly delineated—taking for granted that someone else does the laundry and stocks the refrigerator.”

Looking back from her perspective of 25 years, her vision seems eerily prescient which has stirred a renewed interest in the book and it’s author. In her recent New York Times article she states, “empathy has now become a distasteful personal failing,” and “surveillance capitalism has become the default shrugged-off business practice.”

From the early days of Silicon Valley, Big Tech promised liberation through technology. Instead, it delivered dominance, surveillance capitalism, and ethical collapse. This piece explores why Silicon Valley lost its soul. Purism offers a privacy-first alternative that puts control back into your hands.

The Big Tech Problem

According to the author, more than two-thirds of Silicon Valley residents now believe tech companies have lost their moral compass. Empathy is dismissed as weakness, environmental costs of AI are ignored, and trillion-dollar companies exert unprecedented control. This is the reality of the techno-libertarian ethos that Paulina Borsook warned about decades ago.

Why should so much power be willingly given to a handful of companies that seem to act more and more craven and mendacious by the day?

Why Privacy Matters

Surveillance capitalism has become the default business model. Your data is harvested, monetized, and weaponized against you. In this environment, privacy is not a luxury, it’s a necessity. Purism’s approach offers a radical departure from Big Tech’s exploitative practices.

Purism’s Privacy-First Approach

Purism champions digital freedom through a comprehensive privacy-first model. Its approach begins with a Hardware Root of Trust, ensuring devices boot securely and remain tamper-proof.

The Librem Key adds another layer of protection by enabling offline signing and secure two-factor authentication. At the core of Purism’s ecosystem is PureOS, a fully auditable, free (as in freedom as well as price) open source operating system without proprietary backdoors.

Purism advocates decentralized identity, allowing wide ranges of benefits from hosting a secure crypto wallet to identity services, eliminating reliance on Big Tech platforms.

Privacy by design is central, there is no telemetry, no data harvesting, and encryption keys remain under user control. Supply chain transparency and secure manufacturing practices ensure components are verified and schematics auditable, protecting against hidden vulnerabilities.

Finally, Purism empowers self-custody and offline signing, so private keys never leave the device, guaranteeing true ownership and security.

Librem Key Integration: Secure two-factor authentication and offline signing for transactions.
PureOS Advantage: 100% free and open source, audited for security, and free from proprietary backdoors.
Decentralized Identity: Host your own wallet and identity services, eliminating reliance on Big Tech platforms.
Privacy by Design: No telemetry, no data harvesting, and user-controlled encryption keys.
Supply Chain Transparency: Verified components to prevent hidden vulnerabilities.
Secure Supply Chain: Built with auditable and published schematics to eliminate hardware backdoors.
Self-Custody Principles: Private keys never leave your device, ensuring true ownership and offline protection.

The Bottom Line

Big Tech’s dominance is not inevitable. By embracing Purism’s privacy-first approach, you reclaim control over your digital life. Avoid surveillance capitalism, allowing you to choose transparency, security, and sovereignty.

Purism’s Digital Bill of Rights

Purism is more than just another tech company. We are a social purpose corporation that was founded on the unalienable rights of digital privacy. We have put a great deal of thought into our products and how our company behaves. Among other things, we have published a Digital Bill of Rights that inform our behavior and governs our actions.

For more information see the link below:

Digital Bill of Rights—Digital Civil Rights—Purist Principles