Good article in the LA Times, my adopted local paper for the week, on the tech constituency:
..."I don't know of any group that has 1.3 million members who are as motivated to act when asked to," said Michael Cornfield, research director of George Washington University's Institute for Politics, Democracy and the Internet. MoveOn, he said, "has the potential to become through the Internet what the Christian Coalition became through direct mail."..."What is new in the valley is people applying the tools they know how to use to other problems — the problems of politics," said John Gilmore, a co-founder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation...
The libertarian mind-set among the technologists who congregate around San Francisco has many origins, said Paulina Borsook, author of "Cyberselfish: A Critical Romp Through the Terribly Libertarian Culture of High-Tech."
The technology culture of Silicon Valley came into its own after the Vietnam War and the Watergate scandal, "when people were very suspicious of government," she said. Many engineers were impressed with the tech sector's rapid advance when it was free of most regulation. Then there is what Borsook calls "the scary, essentialist notion that there's something about working with computers that makes you the solo commander of your destiny."...
We are all empowered, but it easily gets to our heads. What Borsook is driving at is whenever someone drives solo, they tend to veer off in destructive directions. While the social libertarian streak that runs across the tech constituency is progressive, techno-libertarians all to often get wrapped up in selfishness.
