Seeing a sudden surge in interest in the “Tech Right” as they’re being dubbed. Often the focus is on business motivations like tax breaks but I think there’s more to it. The narrative that silicon Valley is a bunch of tech hippies was well sown early on, particularly by Stewart Brand and his ilk but throughout that period and prior, the intersection between tech and authoritative politics that favours systems over people is well established.
My career curve from naive and vaguely libertarian computer programming intern to radicalized full-stack anarchist has taught me that most people in this industry are just the worst. Deeply insular people with massive chips on their shoulders, genius and martyr complexes, fully bought into this idea that the “nerds” should be in charge.
I can’t stand talking to most people in my field. They are so myopically focused on either whatever computer puzzle is in front of them or whatever overcomplex scheme of cryptocurrency, third-tier stock options, and investment portfolios they fantasize will make them rich too. The outright worship of tech moguls and their money and their “big ideas.”
The dirty secret is that tech people have always sucked. The radical thinkers, the FOSS people who put careers on the line so people could have functioning computers, those saints who believed computers could actually improve the lives of human beings, those true heroes of the field continue unsung, unfunded; they were always the exploited minority in computing.
A few of the tech conferences that are more corporate, often lean conservative. Not like right wing “hell yeah MAGA”, but like clearly focused on enterprise technology, FAANG (Or whatever we call it now), and tech bros.
The tech conferences focused on developers/non-corporate tech often lean towards liberal. Lots of Trans rights. Lots of LGBT flags. Lots of diversity of speakers and attendees. Usually also very open-source friendly and lots of bashing of major tech companies.
John Ganz did a good coverage of the ideological side of tech, particularly using Herf’s book Reactionary Modernism that looks at the role of engineers in building Nazi ideology.
You can read Reactionary Modernism for free on the Internet Archive
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There’s a thread of Randian ideology that underlies the beginnings of the computer industry. Adam Curtis talks about it in his documentary All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (very much worth watching).
Absolutely. In fact in one major survey of the values of the counterculture conducted back in the 1960s Ayn Rand was listed as one of people’s major influences. There were different strands to the counterculture, one communitarian but the other about self actualisation and the individual. Both positioned themselves in opposition to the state, but differed significantly in what kind of future they wanted.
The “tech right” has always been a thing. It’s why I refuse to work for corporate tech, it’s a boys club full of misogynistic man-children who believe they are deservedly a part of the upper echelon of society, better than everyone else. It’s exhausting.
From my experience, most software corpo employees are just tired parents with mortgages. Like the vast, vast majority. The higher up the pyramid you look the more cultish the vibes, though.
my experience is also primarily with tired parents with mortages… who blame minorities for their unhappiness (so they vote right-wing) and get all of their social and emotional fulfilment from work (so they willingly buy into the C-suite cult).
they are also usually so tech illiterate that they have the vibe of someone who never learned a trade and fell for the ‘learn to code’ advice at some point in their life.
I would love to work in that world. My experience is likely tainted by the jobs I got (past tense as I no longer work in tech; I’m in non-profit work now) having a lot of Junior devs straight out of college (and some interns still in college) so they hadn’t yet experienced enough of life to break out of these childish mentalities.
Their description definitely fits my workplace. We just want to get our 40 hours of work done and sign off and spend time with our families. Stability is really important.
Basically no juniors though, pretty much all seniors that are in their 30s and 40s.
In my experience, the places that are real boys clubs are startups, since they tend to be filled with 20-something tech bros with no families or attachments.
A bunch of rich people with questionable morals like having easily influenceable people in power. Especially now that it is legal for presidents to take bribes.
Silicon valley isn’t what it used to be
Silicon Valley is fundamentally the same as it’s always been, it’s just a bigger scale
Specifically, the nerdy-hippy-freethinker cohort did not flourish at anywhere close to the same scale as the get-rich-quick segment of the population as this modern gold rush emerged.
Most tech bros would be stock brokers if born a couple decades earlier.
I wonder if this is the whole of the tech silicon valley, or just the rich assholes at the top.
I think it’s definitely worth distinguishing between different classes of workers in Silicon Valley. It’s hard to talk about tech ideology in a fully encompassing way because there are for sure dissenting voices. I think to some degree you can say it is the intersection of tech and wealth ideologies but there’s definitely people that aren’t wealthy that also espouse similar thinking so… tricky!
I adopt the handy framing of Silicon valley as a mindset rather than a place to help with this. There’s a great photography book called Seeing Silicon Valley by Mary Beth Meehan that is all photos and stories of the precarious workers that don’t necessarily work in tech. I keep it out in my office to remind me that silicon Valley is not just the rich assholes.
