----- Original Message ----- From: "Thomas Seay" <entheogens at yahoo.com>
> Most American programmers that I know (and I am one
> myself) tend to be either libertarian (and very money
> driven) or they tend to be leftish. A lot of the
> foreign programmers from poor countries tend to have a
> lot of ambitions to make it "big". I realize that is
> a generalization, but it is a generalization that
> holds up.
>
> I think a lot of programmers here in Silicon Valley
> got a wake-up call with the recent "lay-offs". The
> CEO of the company for which Joanna and I both work
> is fond of talking about how we are all "one big
> team"...well, a whole lot of "our team" (10,000+) got
> laid off at the end of November.
>
> Which way will programmers go in a revolution? I
> think there will be a split. I would hope that the
> split would go at least 60 for, 40 against.
>
> In previous revolutions, you had to
> > take over the telephones
> > and media. In the next revolution, it is more likely
> > to be that you need
> > the cooperation of the computer programmers.
>
> Indeed. And I think that it is going to be computer
> systems that allow us to create a more decentralized
> model than seen to date. I will tell you this much
> right now: bringing this system to its knees will be
> easy if we have the majority of programmers on our
> side.
>
> Thomas
>
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It'd be great if some of those laid off programmers sat down with some lefty econowonks and radical political theorists and made some games that simulated a different type of social system. If 100 people can put out "Civilization" or, gasp, "Capitalism II" then creating a red-green game has got to be doable.
Ian