Paulina Borsook was an early and nearly solitary critic of the excesses of Silicon Valley and its virtual extensions. She argued, against the conventional wisdom, that wealth and technology were not the greatest goods in today's society. Raised in a Jewish home, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union at age 14, the former contributor to Wired now describes herself as a "secular humanist and fierce civil libertarian." With her recent book Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High Tech (Public Affairs, 2001), Borsook has only cemented her position as a prophetic voice in today's high-tech wilderness. She recently spoke with Helen Lee, a former editor at Christianity Today who is now CEO of SmartBride.com, about the values of Silicon Valley and its influence on society at large.

Could you describe the tenets of the "religion" espoused by the high-tech community?

The beliefs include things like "Technology is the solution to all human problems," "The market is the true test of everything," "Money is the highest good," and "All government and regulation is bad."

There is also an overreliance on the spreadsheet way of knowledge, which says that if it can't be quantified, then it has no value. In the high-tech world, the intuitive and subjective is bad. If you can't count it, it doesn't exist. So I ask, How do you quantify social services or art? Do these things have no value because they are nonquantifiable?

How much have the cultural changes prevalent in Silicon Valley migrated to the rest of America?

The other incredibly toxic aspect of this culture is the narcissism of the high-tech community. These people have bought into the idea that they are part of the best, most important, most ...