I don't have a good explanation, but I agree that it is widespread. Thomas Frank wrote quite a bit about its late-90s "new economy" manifestation in "One Market Under God"-- the Wired Magazine libertarians. You could also see it the reaction to the automotive bailout last fall-- my colleagues in (Michigan!) IT were largely in favor of Schumpeterian creative destruction to crush the auto unions and spark "innovation". This article by Lawrence Lessig is one example of this type of thinking - http://lessig.org/blog/2008/12/rant_the_mistake_in_bailouts.html .
While it's predictable that big names like Lessig would toe this kind of line, the dangerous thing in my opinion is that geekdom is still considered edgy and cool, and the absolute pinnacle of rationality. And along with geekdom usually comes this right-libertarian discourse. It is a separate question whether IT workers could usefully be organized as part of an actual left in the U.S.. I don't see why not, but it seems like there's some big ideological hurdles to overcome.
My pet theory is that the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series was a cunningly-disguised neoliberal propaganda campaign (much though I love Douglas Adams's comedy). Really: the evil Vogons are the galactic civil service, the Silastic Armourfiends of Striterax all have Estuary English accents in the radio play, the workers knocking Arthur Dent's house down are unionized, and there's at least one throw-away line about "scholars .. labor[ing] into the night over smug little treatises on the value of a planned political economy".