Doug wrote:
> On Oct 6, 2011, at 8:06 AM, Fernando Cassia wrote:
>> Just remember that the Internet you´re using to write that e-mail and
>> send it wasn´t created by monopolists the likes of Bill Gates or Steve
>> Jobs, but by the likes of Tim Berners Lee and Vint Cerf.
> With the assistance of the Pentagon.
> Doug
Indeed. Paulina Borsook's _Cyberselfish_ deals with these sorts of contradictions of right-wing libertarianism in the Geek milieu.
However, this seems to be a uniquely North American phenomenon. In Europe the geek/hacker culture has decidedly more leftist, anti-corporate connotations, as can be seen in phenomena like Germany's Chaos Computer Club, or the Piratenpartei, whose demands in the Berlin elections included a guaranteed income for all and a free-of-charge subway system.
It's a weird sort of culture clash when North American libertarian geeks are shocked to learn that the Linux subculture has socialistic connotations in Europe.
So the right-wing slant of geek culture in the U.S. seems to be culturally rooted, and not an inherent quality of techno-culture.