Posted on 10/24/2008 2:18:30 PM PDT by Still Thinking
I'm reading (for the second time) Scott Rosenberg's Dreaming in Code, the saga of part of the development of Chandler, an open source cross platform PIM. In it, he refers several times to the general liberal orientation of the programmers there (Al Gore even puts in an appearance), and I've noticed this in other software teams and in other types of engineering as well. It's not monolithic, there are certainly numerous conservatives, but it's always been somewhat of a paradox to me. I always felt that you had to be fairly intelligent to be a good tech, because technical issues are what they are and respond only to fact based approaches, and that you pretty much had to have a room temp IQ or less to be a liberal, so I would have expected those professions to be almost exclusively dominated by conservatives. So what gives? Anyone thought about this before?
That goes along with another of my hypotheses; that they're not true liberals but are libertarian enough to be put off by Republican social authoritarianism, so think of themselves as liberals, yet aren't politically involved enough to be concerned about Dem/liberal authoritarianism on every other issue.
Yes, they do. I assume you do too, barring an endocrinological abnormality. Do you consider yourself "sweaty"?
The liberal techs where I work are all in IT. The majority of techs that do software development are for McCain with one former Ron Paul guy voting for Bob Barr.
We had a subcontractor out the other day and I said he was “my favorite Democrat” to which he replied, “I’m a green”. I then asked him if I could count on him voting for Nader.
Maybe those who fancy themselves writers are liberal.
In my current large shop, it’s a good mix.
I only consider myself not (as) sweaty when I am around techies... not the sales people of course (they are not really techies).
I’m talking about the true techies they keep in the basment of every tech firm.... the stinky ones.
Ppl who live in cities are generally liberal
Becuase they think they can do anything given enough resources and money.
Engineers of the mechanical/aerospace type are typically conservative.
An essay by a rich nerd (he sold one of the first online storefront systems to Yahoo back before the .com bubble burst).
The whole modern idea of the "geek" personality developed. Before that there weren't geeks. Geeks are narrow-minded idiots and treated like idiots. Idiot savants, but idiots. It allowed the software staff to be treated like a herd of cattle, it worked for massive hirings and layoffs as projects wax and wane. Dehunmanizing.
The political mindset you see of goony loony vacuous tech-mech-manga-socialism seems to be a outgrowth of that coddled cattle social dynamic.
Hmm...Seven Unix Admins in my group, including me, and six registered as Republicans and one Libertarian. All seven of us are McCain voters.
Techs are by and large economic conservatives like myself. Or so I’ve noticed. Many of us have no use for the Sarah Palin wing of conservatism.
Not this techie. Not at all!!!!!!!!
There are different types of intelligence and aptitudes. We have only scratched the surface of trying to adequately measure any of it.
Hippies were at the forefront of the personal computer revolution. Look at Steve Jobs and Wozniak. The image of the conservative nerd applies to engineers from the mid-sixties and before.
Plus I think there may be a difference between engineering types and computer science types. I'm not sure if I can put my finger on it, but I'll guess: Engineering types have to be a bit more logical and think further ahead. Just plowing ahead on your first idea can cause a circuit to blow up or an engine to blow if you don't consider most if not all of the variables. CS types can be a little looser. If your first ideas fail, just try something else, eventually it works "good enough". Their minds are trained differently and they apply those thought processes to life problems.
About 20 years ago, I worked in a firm of about 15 ME's and support staff. One of the engineers whom I considered one of the one or two best was a hard core liberal. The rest of the office was somewhat evenly divided, which is still more liberals than I would have predicted. That's what got me started thinking on this issue in the first place.
Yes. Sedentary activity like programming has a tendency to lead to that. They’re usually big as whales and incredibly foul smelling.
The geeks at Mrs. steveo’s office are totally McPalin and vocal about it.
Most every tech I know is a conservative reactionary.
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