Silicon Utopias: the Making of a Tech Startup Ecosystem in Manchester (Uk)
Richard Pfeilstetter SILICON UTOPIAS: THE MAKING OF A TECH STARTUP ECOSYSTEM IN MANCHESTER (UK)
abstract ‘Silicon utopias’, the hope for a green, affluent and happy future through the creation of new tech-businesses, are today informing many urban development processes globally. In this contribution, I look at the recent remodeling of Manchester (Northern England) as an entrepreneurial city. In particular, I present a specific government investment scheme and its relation to the work of a group of local lobbyists who have been promoting a new tech startup community in the city since 2012. Stemming from this empirical example, I explore the interplay between local entrepreneurial dreams and the state’s promotion of startups. The paper concludes with the argument that an anthropologically informed concept of cynicism can contribute to a nuanced reading of silicon utopias and dystopias.
Keywords: Startup community, entrepreneurship, Manchester, utopias, cynicism
1 Introduction Mason fit the category of utopias of human liberation through technology; utopias which In an information society, no thought, are periodically updated through whatever debate or dream is wasted—whether is a ‘new’ technology in any given moment conceived in a tent camp, prison cell or the (Harvey 1996: 127). Tech(nology), not only table football space of a startup company. in the journalistic domain, is today writ large with software, computer-sustained electronic ‘The end of capitalism has begun’, by Paul devices, internet and a selected number of Mason in The Guardian (2015) related omnipresent global corporations, brands and algorithm-sustained products and services It was at the table football in a co-workspace which have become ubiquitous in everyday in Manchester (Northwest England) where life. Nevertheless, Mason’s reference to the I was reading a very similar slogan written prison cell or the tent camp also indicates on the wall while waiting for the CEO of the association of technology startups with a technology startup company to finish his transgression of the status quo. Besides, labels game for our interview. The prophetic title and such as the information society suggest a specific the oracular words of the BBC journalist Paul kind of symbiosis between technology and
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culture as a distinctive feature of this moment in representations of society and the economy. history. Far from being exclusively journalistic Tropes such as ‘the sharing economy’, ‘creative jargon, academia, corporations, the art world industries’ or ‘the information society’ envision and politicians employ quite similar vocabulary present and future worlds, resultant from as Mason and similar self-descriptions of tech computer based technologies, in academic startup companies do exist in everyday practice, writing, technology businesses and ordinary as this contribution will show. How is it, one experience. Anthropologists have rephrased might ask, that business creation, when related Anderson’s ‘imagined communities’ (2001 to digital technology, is seen today as a way to [1983]), to call some of these representations get rich, overcome climate change or promote ‘imagined networks’ (Green et al. 2005: 806) happiness? or ‘imagined worlds’ (Appadurai 1996: 33). The following research report is divided Subsequently, for anthropology a whole into four main sections. The first section looks series of new intriguing questions have arisen. at the origins of these pervasive ‘silicon utopias’. Technology itself is increasingly displayed as It explores the imaginations and concepts ‘culture’ in its own right, not only as enabling, related to the ‘digital age’ in art, academia and improving or assisting culture (Harvey 1996: in the first ethnographic accounts of computer 121–123). New exotic communities emerge, technology communities published at the turn such as digital natives, hackers, freaks, techies, of the century. The second section analyses nerds, gamers or geeks (Tocci 2009) and online the political economy of the recent restyling communities seem to question place-based of Manchester as a digital-technological city. ethnography (Whitehead and Wesch 2012). In the third section, I present the case of a Among the origins of fantasies of the specific development project supported by the digital or information age was the work of central government and articulated by local Marshall McLuhan.2 The Medium is the Message leaders of the tech-community. The final section (2008 [1967]), a book at the intersections of relates this case study to concepts such as the philosophy, cultural studies and pop-art, includes entrepreneurial dream. An anthropologically some of his most popular ideas. Communication informed notion of cynicism, I suggest in the technology is shaping the mentality of societies conclusions, can contribute to a balanced as we move towards a world of total involvement, evaluation of the contemporary ideology of the global village, one of the popular terms he technological entrepreneurialism beyond has coined. ‘Electric circuitry is recreating in the utopias of practitioners and dystopias of us the multi-dimensional space orientation of academics. the “primitive”’; it ‘confers a mythic dimension on our ordinary individual and group actions’ Utopias and and it is ‘orientalizing the west’ (McLuhan and ethnographies Fiore 1967: 57, 114, 145). Today McLuhan- of technologically influenced scholars relate this ‘new tribalism’ saturated communities to internet communities (Stille 2000) and anthropologists have referred to McLuhan’s The apparently ever-growing importance of ‘global village’ as part of the history of the information and communication technology globalization concept (Eriksen 2007: 2). In in everyday life shapes contemporary addition, there have been recent anthropological
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narratives similar to McLuhan’s, in form ‘more journalistic’ (2002: 9). Both Borsook`s (presented as philosophic artwork), popularity self-titled ‘gonzo anthropology’ (2001: 3) and (reaching out to a wide general public) and English-Lueck’s in-depth ethnography were content (technology is changing our mentality). innovative for their time, considering that Michael Wesch, professor of anthropology, Google, founded in 1998 and moving to Palo is author of the artistic video collage, ‘The Alto in 1999, was not even mentioned yet by Machine is Us/ing Us’, arguing that the internet English-Lueck. Both looked at the cultural leads to more sharing, trading, collaboration and consequences of the new computer technology is reconfiguring identities and self-perceptions. not only for consumers, but for their producers, It was the most popular video on the Web in studying, through participant observation, the October 2007 and up to 2015 it had been local particularities of a community shaped viewed over eleven million times. The prophetic by ‘technological saturation’ (English-Lueck nature of these accounts has similar correlates in 2002). Borsook created a powerful dystopia corporate narratives of revolutionary products, of Northern California’s ‘technolibertarian’ such as the iPad (everything changes with iPad), community which she, fifteen years after her Skype (keeps the world talking) or Facebook publication, describes in a contribution for the (it’s free and always will be). Of course, the blog of the Institute of Network Cultures of the very nature of utopias is that they are entangled Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences as with dystopias. ‘Don’t be evil,’ was Google’s ‘so.much.worse.now’: much discussed corporate slogan until recently, while the first Macintosh commercial in 1984 Silicon Valley is both (as has always been played with Orwell’s dystopian novel, ‘Nineteen the case) in bed with and in opposition to Eighty-Four’. government. The language of ‘disruption’ At the turn of the century two books, by and ‘sharing economy’ seems more about Paulina Borsook (2000) and Jan English- avoiding taxes, licenses, and corporate Lueck (2002) respectively, were published on liability than ‘sharing’ anything (i.e. deeply the cultural particularities of a community that technolibertarian)—but then the terms was seen as the showcase of the ‘information Friend ™ and Like ™ have also taken on revolution’ and the ‘emerging global culture’ strange new meanings. (2015) (English-Lueck 2002: 8). They analyzed the values and worldviews of the Silicon Valley The ethos that English-Lueck identifies in the tech or startup community, a group structured Bay Area of the 1990s is similar, but the more by the symbolic and economic power of the cultural-relativistic style of the monograph cutting edge technology they themselves did not allow for such accentuated political created.3 Both authors knew about each other positioning. Instrumental reasoning prevailed while writing their books. Borsook depicted a (life is managed), ‘the production of technology telephone conversation with English-Lueck [was] a moral mission’ (technoptimism) and as amusing, because ‘to these anthropologists, people lived for their work as they felt joy what I was describing was the religion of and passion for technology or ‘technolust’ their native informants’ (2001: 4–5). Inversely, (2002: 34–35, 42, 51, 95, 174). In 2015, these English-Lueck referred to Borsook’s work in a descriptions feel mundane and familiar as footnote, misspelling her name as Barsook, as our everyday experience is intimately related
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with ever-present mobile devices (ubiquitous authors like the English geographer David computing is the technical term used by Harvey have prominently argued that the software engineers today). The author rightly basic functions of city governance have shifted anticipated the predictive character of her from redistribution to inter-urban competition. findings in the Silicon Valley laboratory. The ‘business’ of public administrations today Today, administrations and corporations is attracting external sources of funding, in are trying to reproduce these ‘silicon commu- Manchester as in other cities within advanced nities’ or ‘places’ (English-Lueck 2002: 11, 166, capitalist societies (1989: 4, 7, 9). In this 181). In this endeavor, more intriguing than direction, recent redevelopments in the central the question of what digital-tech communities and eastern districts of Manchester, or the ontologically are, is how they are envisioned as bid for the 2000 Olympic Games, have been desirable futures by politicians, city planners described as an accommodation between the and lobbyists. ‘[A]ll the world wants to be what city’s authorities and the local and global it thinks Silicon Valley is like’ (Borsook 2001: private sector (Quilley 1999; 2000; Ward 8; my italics). Along these lines, the entrepre- 2003; Hetherington 2007). ‘Manchester has neurial ideal underlying urban redevelopment in been positioned (and perhaps cast itself) as Manchester has received considerable attention the entrepreneurial city writ large’ (Ward 2003: from academics in recent years. 124–125). But it has also been argued that the new entrepreneurial governance has required Manchester: more not less state intervention (Ward 2003: the entrepreneurial city 117) and forced the traditionally socialist city council into arrangements with the neoliberal Greater Manchester, the third largest agendas of governments at Westminster, either metropolitan area in the UK, was once the Tory or New Labor (Quilley 1999: 187). These epicenter of the industrial revolution, especially arguments were again compatible with Harvey’s in terms of the textile industry. As with framework of cities’ growing competition Silicon Valley today, places and products were for redistribution funds from the central labelled ‘Manchester’ because of the worldwide government (Harvey 1989: 10). diffusion of the city’s cotton products, which led A particularly compelling ethnographic historian Harold James to a comparison with account has been produced by Green, Harvey the contemporary iconicity of the McDonalds and Knox (2005) related to a third layer hamburger (2001: 12).4 Since the 1930s, the city of entanglement between local elites in has experienced a process of urban decline and Manchester and powerful institutions seeking deindustrialization. From the 1970s onwards to redefine urban spaces and communities and especially after an IRA bomb explosion through investment in technology. They were in the city center in 1996, the city has been reporting on European Union funded projects ‘regenerated’ by city planners, administrations during the 1990s and early 2000s aiming to and corporations, mainly through public-private develop computer-supported networks among partnerships (Hetherington 2007: 630–631). European cities’ administrations, foster the Urban studies have, since the 1990s, ‘digitalization’ of museums or support the experienced what some have called an consolidation of Manchester’s new-media ‘entrepreneurial turn’ (Ward 2003: 116), and industry (Knox 2003). The moral underpinning
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of these public investment schemes, that the It was to help shorten the distance between authors have labelled ‘the imperative to connect’, Silicon Valley and East London, also referred consisted in nurturing a sense of belonging to a to as ‘Silicon Roundabout’ (see for instance new (virtual) Europe that would be compatible debates in The Guardian [Wintour and Travis with existing identifications of nationhood 2010]). In 2012, inspired by the mapping of and local place (Green et al. 2005: 817). New tech-businesses in London realized by Tech information and communication technologies, City, two Manchester-based entrepreneurs had like railways or television before them, were the idea of gathering novel, qualitative, first- used for place-making, these being the social hand information and analysis of so called ‘tech processes of generation and control of space, its communities’, existing outside London. The meaning, boundaries and symbols (Green et al. following description of different but related 2005: 805–806). initiatives launched by media experts, bank This political-economic process is currently consultants and software engineers since 2012, being reshaped in the United Kingdom. draws from observations, interviews and social- The central government’s reaction to the media-text analysis I have realized during two intensification of the Scottish independence months of fieldwork in summer 2015. movement since 2014 has been a new attempt Among the first steps in the making of to ‘devolve powers’ to all regions of the kingdom. a Manchester tech startup community was the Metropolitan areas in the north of England, collection and display of statistical data that such as Manchester, inferior to the south in justified speaking of a startup-community in the growth, population and infrastructure, have first place. After a group of entrepreneurs had also been promised new self-governance interviewed prominent or successful founders of and investments by the conservative British tech businesses in different cities in the UK, they government re-elected in 2015. This wider started to create the profile of a ‘Manchester political agenda, promoted with the slogan tech community’. Several web presentations ‘Northern Powerhouse’, was accompanied by have been set up, showing statistics on growth, public and private investments in the field of employment, types of startups, but especially the digital industries, which take advantage of the different components of the ‘ecosystem’ such the general favorable political climate, as my as the identification of research institutes or following example illustrates. bars frequented by techies. This was combined with an increase in social media-disseminated Making a tech startup narratives of success stories of particular ecosystem in Manchester enterprises, events and entrepreneurs. Hence, in order to visualize the existence of a tech startup The Tech City UK initiative, started in 2010 community, it had to be pictured, mapped, by the conservative-liberal British government, measured and named, mainly because it is consisted of a series of investments (broadband), an industry that is ill-defined and constantly deregulations (entrepreneur visa, review of changing, as observed by Knox of Manchester’s intellectual property laws) and public-private ‘creative industry’ (2003: 155–156). More specific partnerships (research eventually supported by social media campaigns followed, such as a corporations such as Google and Facebook), to slogan that promoted the idea of Manchester promote the East London technology cluster. as an imminent top-five European tech-city.
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In a second step, these lobbyists created a media-expert was portrayed as a ‘rising star’ physical and social infrastructure that allowed by a British computer magazine and the story for the possibility of first-hand and face-to- was echoed in various conversations and public face experiences of a local tech community presentations at events directed at Manchester ‘offline’. For this goal, several co-workspaces and tech entrepreneurs I visited on a daily basis periodic networking events have been created during my fieldwork. The names of key persons, and promoted. the amounts of private and public money that Then, in a third step, all these activities had been ‘raised’ and the general excitement attracted the attention of those in charge about ‘what’s going on’ has been at the core of of Tech City UK. In 2013, two young men these tales. involved in the promotion of the Manchester startup community were invited to advise the Government subsidy governmental Tech City UK managers that and the entrepreneurial brought together various ‘leading figures from dream thriving digital clusters’ (Tech City UK 2015). The new ‘Cluster Alliance’ also attempted to This specific way in which the physical, expand Tech City activities to support the social and visual infrastructure of a ‘startup rest of the ‘Tech Nation’ and its ‘clusters’ and ecosystem’ has been set up in Manchester ‘communities’ (the Prime Minister’s words in since 2012, especially by a small group of this report). As a result of this, in 2015 the young entrepreneurs and media experts (which creation of ‘Tech North’ was announced and finally attracted the attention of the state the government committed to an investment of administration) fits in well with the four basic £11 million in tech incubators in three cities in patterns of the entrepreneurial dream identified northern England, £4 million of this to fund the by Gill (2013). The entrepreneurial dream is proposal presented by one of these entrepreneurs. a narrative that was essential to US business In addition, this social-media and public periodicals’ display of entrepreneurs throughout relations expert eventually raised another £20 the 2000s. First, in these tales there was an origin million from private investors, as he and others story of difficulty. In our case from Manchester, told me. The investment from the government one of the important figures in the making of was justified in the budget with reference to the this startup community portrayed himself as Tech Nation report, which ‘revealed’ the large coming from a working class background and growth numbers and important employment his way to success was hampered by economic rates of digital businesses in the north of hardship. Secondly, there was a unique idea England. from an ordinary person. In our case, it was the The success story of this and other lobbyists expansion of the Tech City initiative in London was celebrated on Twitter and LinkedIn or to other parts of the UK. The third momentum specialized online forums, magazines or local of the entrepreneurial dream that Gill mentions, media, showcasing some of the main elements namely innovation through technology, was of success, such as the mapping of startup realized by our entrepreneurs through the communities outside London, the provision of picturing and identifying of tech clusters consulting services to the government and the outside London through social media, statistics amount of money raised. In fact, this particular and web presentations. Finally, masculine
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qualities of strength and adventurousness were when applied to startup promotion. At the heart not only embodied by many of these young men, of the entrepreneurship concept is an imagined often described in conversations with people at local agency or individual of the kind Gill technology events as ‘leaders’, but also by the (2013) has described and which individual tech- stories they disseminated, such as a backpacking community promoters represent, not a faceless trip across Britain in order to gather the data for multi-national corporation. From this angle, the previously mentioned innovative report on the entrepreneur is a contemporary metaphor tech-clusters outside London. of the local within the economic dimension From the local perspective and in of globalization (Pfeilstetter 2014). In this conversations at tech events in Manchester, it sense, the Google Innovation Hub or Facebook was the entrepreneurial dream coming true Developer Garage, as part of the London Tech that finally attracted government investment City initiative, could be criticized as a ‘corporate, and bureaucratic support like Tech North top-down’ policy that allows US corporations initiative. Nevertheless, besides the individual to ‘cherry-pick’ promising British startups while capacities of the lobbyists in working for ‘their paying tax in Ireland (see PDA 2010).5 Thus, community’ (or ‘talent’ in the rhetoric of startup this kind of private engagement undercuts the communities) and the element of coincidence possibility of the formation of an archetype (both core momentums of the entrepreneurial entrepreneur (like Steve Jobs) in the UK, which dream), the government investment also had was the justification of public investment in structural explanations. In Latour’s terms the first place. Therefore, the narrative that (2005) these ‘tech-community leaders’ were justifies taxpayers’ indirectly subsidizing private (agentive) mediators from the local perspective, startups, such as the funding of the Tech North but were intermediaries when looking at the project, needs a community which works as wider political landscape of the UK of 2015, as the collective expression of individual startups. I argue in the following. As in other governance areas, the state and On the one hand, the specific public-private corporations need to set up, identify and support partnership expressed by the collaboration distinguishable local groups and mediators between Tech North and local lobbyists could for the sake of their own legitimacy. The Tech successfully tackle a basic contradiction of the Nation report works with ‘community partners’ administrative promotion of entrepreneurship. and the different local businesses, and the State interference in startups, creativity, initiatives that these Mancunian6 (and therefore competition or innovation is an incongruity in local) entrepreneurs created were styled as such its own terms, which administrations seek to partners. The ‘community leaders’ that have disperse. This becomes evident when looking been co-opted for the Cluster Alliance were at the Tech City UK’s web self-presentation among the interviewees of the Tech Nation as a ‘publicly, funded non-profit team with report which again was similar to the statistics a private sector mentality’. This integration of gathered by these entrepreneurs themselves. the private sector mentality in public policy, This was portrayed as a specific quality of the normally practiced through partnership with information as it was ‘the first community driven large corporations, as we have seen in the report of this scale in the UK’ (Tech City UK discussion of the entrepreneurial city at the 2015: 6, my italics). So the favorable growth beginning of this section, has a second problem numbers of ‘tech clusters’ used as justification for
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the investment in the ‘local ecosystems’ in the with core technological competencies, such 2015 UK Budget were based on the information as digital media in Manchester or Fin[ancial] of ‘tech entrepreneurs’ (UK Budget 2015: 44). Tech in Edinburgh. After all, as the Chair of This is what some of my informants called ‘from Tech City UK recognizes, the digital sector the community for the community’, or what a is also about ‘national prestige’ (Tech City state official told me in an interview was the UK 2015: 3). Maybe it is not surprising that main goal of Tech North: ‘getting the ideas both the governmental Tech Nation report from the businesses back to the government’. and the previous mapping of tech clusters Meanwhile, this engagement of corporations from Manchester entrepreneurs finish with and the state with the local startup community nearly the same wording: not only London is was also producing its specific ironies. At the important but the whole nation. Finally, a ‘£4 time of my fieldwork, a Tech North office space million government investment towards an was being built above a multi-national bank 8 floor incubator’ (UK Budget 2015: 44, my funded co-workspace. The noise of the works italics) in Manchester’s city center also fits the made one of my informants change her office, monumental place-making tradition in which ‘It was so loud you couldn’t work,’ she said. the powerful have engaged since the 1980s Finally, and not less important, media- in Manchester (see discussion in the previous effective investment into ‘tech-communities’ in section on the entrepreneurial city). the north fitted with an overarching political Summarizing, some local ‘tech community strategy of the government to enhance the leaders’ in Manchester were simultaneously ‘northern powerhouse’. From the governance private promoters and institutional analysts of perspective, when the Chair of Tech City UK the evolving tech-community, key informants says that ‘great digital companies spring from for journalists or politicians and bureaucratic collaborative communities of entrepreneurs’ administrators, government advisors and public (Tech City UK 2015: 3), she endorses the fund receivers. Different roles were embraced discourse that the ‘local community’ politics is simultaneously: the charismatic community about seeking to connect to the ‘global market’. organizer, the successful businessman and the The expansion of the Tech City program to solemn government advisor. Each role was Tech North and lastly Tech Nation fits into structurally connected, a source of authority a more general effort by the British government in each other’s’ field, for instance acting as to reengage with the country’s peripheries a ‘community leader’ for the government, since 2014. The subsequent evolvement of representing an archetype entrepreneur for Tech City, Tech North and Tech Nation relate young people interested in starting a business to the socio-political stereotype of opposed, or representing a mediator with ‘connections to unequal parts (London/center vs. Manchester/ the government’ for corporate investors. In an periphery), which dissolves into a synthesis interview, one of these leaders was defending (England/UK). Penny Harvey (1996) has classless revolutionary communitarism, doing described this phenomenon in Universal things for free, teamwork and humanitarian Exhibitions, where political unities (nation- values above business, ‘making as much money states) are produced through commensurable as you can’ and nationalist positions such as differences. The Tech Nation is made up of being ‘proud of that great island’. Simultaneously the sum of ‘clusters’, or territories associated he was embracing a specific Mancunian
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particularism, when talking about the ‘most the opposition between profit and charity, rebellious city, with a healthy disrespect towards competition and collaboration, work and leisure the establishment’. ‘What I want to represent’ or business and politics is a practical response he said ‘is an entrepreneur who thinks about to the multiple demands that the role of a tech people, the planet and profit.’ With this ‘triple entrepreneurship promoter entails. On the other bottom line’ my informant was paraphrasing hand, it might also indicate a basic ideological John Elkington, an influential British business source for subcultural group cohesion of which author, though to some this may sound like the (real or imagined) opposition to ordinary a (silicon) utopian idea aiming to reconcile people or mainstream society is constitutive. incommensurable values. Many tech entrepreneurs are portrayed or portray themselves as ‘extraordinarily’ lunatic, Conclusions: silicon innovative and creative. utopias or cynicism? For McRobbie (2016) the whole euphoria about the ‘creative economy’ is part of a wider One might ask if the denial of the difference political project introduced in Britain at the between conflicting principles, such as profit turn of the century to get the new generations (self-interest) and community (common used to the idea of labor as uncertain, unstable interest), is a respectable utopia worth fighting and precarious. Prominent sociologists such as for or a cynical strategy in business and politics, Sennett (1998) or Giddens (1991) described the practiced in Manchester and elsewhere, in order distorting consequences for the self of the new to legitimate the underlying quest for power flexible labor regime. More recently, the focus and money. Steinmüller, based on evidence from of analysis has shifted from deterritorialization contemporary China, distinguishes between towards surveillance as a central social outcome totalizing and minimal definitions of cynicism of digital technology. For instance, Frank (2014). He sees the former as a universalistic Pasquale (2015) talks about an emergent moral category that holds cynical reasoning to ‘Black Box Society’ where the all-embracing be a (negative) ideological expression of our time. measurement of behavior (big data), processed From this angle, the tech community promoters by secret (privately owned) algorithms, leads to in Manchester could be seen as at the forefront automated judgments in politics and business of a neoliberal eclecticism that exploits values (see also Steiner 2012). A common thread in such as opportunism, nationalism, altruism all these works is the disenchantment of digital or ecology as means to an end. Whereas the technology, celebrated by governments and minimal definition of cynicism, more suited for businesses alike, by uncovering its ideological ethnographic accounts, as Steinmüller suggests, foundations (techno optimism) and negative is the peoples’ pragmatic distinction between social consequences. They tend to substitute social conventions and ‘real life’ (the underlying the silicon utopias of many technology motivations of human existence, such as entrepreneurs and state officials with academic sex, money and power). Cynicism here is an dystopias. everyday social criticism that may designate In this contribution, I have tried to show subordination, excuse-making or a challenge to how notions such as the entrepreneurial dream prevailing moralities. Bringing this idea back or cynicism allow for a more nuanced analysis of to our case, neglecting, rejecting or suppressing contemporary ideologies such as the new digital
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entrepreneurialism and their coming to (social) REFERENCES life in cities like Manchester. This is important because, as Clifford Geertz reminds us, ‘[w]e Anderson, Benedict 2001 [1983]. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of may wait as long for the “end of ideology” as the Nationalism. London: Verso. positivists have waited for the end of religion’ (1973: 199). Appadurai, Arjun 1996. Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Notes Borsook, Paulina 2000. Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech. 1 This research received funding from the New York: PublicAffairs. University of Seville (VPPI-US I.6A; V Plan Propio de Investigación de la Universidad de Borsook, Paulina. 2001. Cyberselfish: Ravers, Sevilla). Guilders, Cyberpunks, and Other Silicon Valley 2 For a literature overview of new ways of Life Forms. Yale Journal of Law and Technology 3 (1): imagining space shaped by information and Article 1. communication technologies see Green et al. (2005: 805–806). Borsook, Paulina 2015. Cyberselfish 15 Years 3 Helmreich’s (1998) work, another pioneering text After, Part I. The Institute of Network Cultures. of that time on similar issues, was more specific Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences. http:// in focus and outside the Bay Area, looking at networkcultures.org/blog/2015/01/29/paulina- artificial life scientists at the Santa Fe Institute, borsook-cyberselfish-15-years-after-part-1/ a private non-profit research institution in New
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Wintour, Patrick and Alan Travis 2010. Olympic Subjectivities, Unhuman Subjects, and the End of Park to Rival Silicon Valley in David Cameron’s Anthropology. Colorado: University Press of Colorado. Vision for East London. The Guardian November 4th. https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/nov/04/ london-olympics-legacy-silicon-valley-cameron RICHARD PFEILSTETTER
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