The Sunset of the Californian Ideology?

Paris Marx is joined by Richard Barbrook to discuss how the Californian Ideology illustrated the neoliberalism of Silicon Valley, whether it’s still relevant in the present, and how games can be used for political purposes.

Richard Barbrook is the author of “Imaginary Futures: From Thinking Machines to the Global Village” and “Class Wargames: Ludic subversion against spectacular capitalism.” He’s a senior lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Westminster. Follow Richard on Twitter as @richardbarbrook.

• Read the original Californian Ideology essay in Mute Magazine and Richard’s thoughts on the 20th anniversary in “The Internet Revolution: From Dot-com Capitalism to Cybernetic Communism.”
• France Insoumise presidential candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon released a game called Fiscal Combat that helped inspire Corbyn Run.
• Richard mentions Guy Debord’s “A Game of War” and Bertell Ollman’s “Class Struggle” board games.
• Other resources: Marshall McLuhan, Fred Turner’s “From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism,” and Guy Debord’s “The Society of the Spectacle.”

• France’s Start-Up Nation Is a Neoliberal Hell w/ Nastasia Hadjadji
• Tech Billionaires Are Reshaping US Politics w/ Jacob Silverman
• Mark Zuckerberg is Burning Meta to the Ground w/ Dave Karpf
• How Peter Thiel Wields His Power in Silicon Valley w/ Moira Weigel