Californian ideology

Afterlives of the California Ideology| “Polemic Becomes Canon”: An Interview With Richard Barbrook on the Californian Ideology

In this interview, Richard Barbrook shares his perspective on the essay “The Californian Ideology,” which he published in 1995 and 1996 with Andy Cameron, who died in 2012. Richard Barbrook lays out the essay’s genesis, explores the inspiration offered by Marx and Engels’ The German Ideology, discusses his ambivalent but not simply dismissive relationship to California and the United States, and provides insight into the thinking around the masters program in hypermedia at the University of Westminster, United Kingdom, that he and Cameron were setting up at the time of the essay’s publication. In the essay they wanted to impart a different approach to digital technologies than was prevalent in the Californian computer industry at the time. Overall, the interview makes it apparent how “The Californian Ideology” should be seen in its temporal context—as well as how the basic questions the essay raises continue to shape the discussion about digital media and infrastructures today.

Thirty Years On, the Californian Ideology is Alive and Well

In the seminal essay, Barbrook and Cameron insisted that there are other ways to build technology, and to do it democratically, writes Nathan Schneider.

RESPONSES TO THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY BY CELIA PEARCE

The publication of 'The Californian Ideology' has inspired an impassioned debate over the issues raised by the article. Here is a selection of some of the most interesting responses to the piece:

Rationalist Cults of Silicon Valley

Innovators and Cranks

‘Headed for technofascism’: the rightwing roots of Silicon Valley

The industry’s liberal reputation is misleading. Its reactionary tendencies – celebrating wealth, power and traditional masculinity – have been clear since the dotcom mania of the 1990s

The Rise of Silicon Valley’s Techno-Religion (Published 2025)

The Rationalists, a community focused on the risks of artificial intelligence, regularly gather with tech figures and other like-minded people in a complex that covers much of a city block.

siliconization

Siliconization refers to how local technocultural practices all around the world have been replaced by an imported "Silicon Valley" model, especially since the 1990s.

Silicon Valley has a science fiction problem | Aeon Essays

Tech titans claim the genre inspired them. But all they’ve done is graft their politics onto stories of a better future

When Silicon Valley’s AI warriors came to Washington

Effective altruism is increasingly described as a cult. But as the movement’s billionaire adherents pour money into D.C., its obsession with the AI apocalypse is remaking the capital’s tech policy landscape.

THE CALIFORNIAN IDEOLOGY by Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron | Imaginary Futures

“Not to lie about the future is impossible and one can lie about it at will” – Naum Gabo [1]

The Nerd Reich

The Extremist Tech Authoritarian Politics of Silicon Valley

The Anti-Intellectualism of Silicon Valley Elites

I recently re-read Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, and now every time a reactionary Silicon Valley billionaire opens his mouth, I think about it. So I wrote about it for The Nation. Here's the column: On Instagram, there’s an activist named Brian Patrick (@pano.

Silicon Valley, disruption, and the end of uncertainty

This paper reflects on the relationship between high-tech disruption narratives and uncertainty. My main argument is that an economic sociology of the future is incomplete without addressing the ‘d...