>Yes, until you get to be about 40 and the industry considers you to be so
>much dead meat.
>
>You have a still immature sector where start ups are still common, unlike
>the mature sectors, such as steel, coal, textiles, but also media. Little
>by little, the AOLs
>and the Microsofts invade this still fertile turf. As that happens, the
>brave libertarianism
>common to that sector will dissipate.
Still it's amazing how long an ideology can outlive its material roots, whether we're talking about broad fantasies of universal middle classness in the U.S., despite the smallest middle class (in income terms) in the First World, and of unique upward mobility, despite flat to declining real incomes and mobility stats in line with other OECD countries. Regionally, though Texas, California, and Arizona have become heavily urbanized states (an urbanization accomplished with decades of heavy federal subsidies), lone wolf/cowboy frontier thinking lives on. And among the cyberlibertarians, contract programmers seem to figure themselves as heroic entrepreneurs - or free agents, as Fast Company calls them.
Doug