I kid, sort of, but the headline of this article at The Guardian lamenting the white nerdiness of Silicon Valley is so transparent in its contempt for the dorks that occupy Northern California as to be almost Ogre-esque. It even works in a dig at autism:
Autism can be a useful trait if you are seeking technical brilliance, but it can become a hindrance if a general naiveté about human beings is translated directly into the design of the products and services used by billions of other people around the world. If internet culture is on the autism spectrum, this could explain how some companies can regard privacy as collateral damage. It may also explain how some companies constantly miss the small social cues coming from their customers. It would certainly explain how Facebook continually offends its users, and may explain how some technology companies can’t see that an open, connected and copyright-free world isn’t necessarily better for everyone.
That’s either punching up or punching down. I think. Seems no one can agree.
I’ve written before on progressives’ strange defense of intellectual property when the mantra for so many years was information wants to be free. Seems that if a bunch of happy-go-lucky white guys are into it, they’re out of it. It’s now up to the market liberals known as libertarians to carry on the hippie ethos…
In any case, Omniorthogonal has more and deeper thoughts than I on the piece.
Dry Hyphen Olympics 