Why are so many techs liberal?

Here | Now | Me

[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?

[Danae]

I think it has to do with length of time in the Education system, the longer in, the more liberal when they get out. Until of course the bills come due and they notice that the Gov is taking half their paycheck. Then they start waking up a bit, takes years.

[rabscuttle385]

They all hate us Conservatives because we force them to recognize their depraved lifestyle.

I don't agree with that.

Of course, some of them are freaks, but most are, as another poster mentioned, turned off by the GOP's social authoritarianism and economic liberalism.

[Kid Shelleen]

[bvw]

The initial explosion I mentioned was east coast, not west. Univac, Burroughs, RCA, IBM, Sperry, etc, etc. All the big shops were east coast.

[rabscuttle385]

Hayden Panetierre would be forced to make love to a geek each night.

Natalie Portman...if you read /.

Also, here's a picture of Ms. Panetierre, for fieldmarshal's amusement:

[bvw]

The significance of Silicon Valley is overstated. East coast had Commodore, Rockwell, Carnegie Mellon. The west coast had some neat stuff, true, but near every thing of size happened more and earlier east coast.

[rabscuttle385]

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLLLLL!!!

[Reeses]

In some cases it's related to narcissism, possibly induced by an overly supportive and protective mother and a lack of real feedback causing a detachment from reality. Vanity always occurs in tandem with envy, and large amounts of envy are the root cause of leftism. Envy is also the root cause of most murder, war, theft, destruction, and voting Democrat.

[max americana]

What’s the difference between WIRED POPULAR MECHANICS/SCIENCE magazine?

Wired had Al Gore more than 2x on it’c covers and is an advocate of “Global warming”.

POPULAR MECHANICS/SCIENCE always has a pro-U.S. military slant in most of it;s issues and it’s editors showed up on an idiot debate debunking the 9-11 conspiracy.

[rabscuttle385]

I agree with the more libertarian assessments (economic conservative, social liberal/moderate) of computing folks, at least where I'm going to school. Of course, yes, there are flaming liberals here too, but they are not the majority.

[It's what happens when you place the Computer Science department in the Engineering School.]

[Paul Heinzman]

Because the first letter in MIT stands for “Massachusetts.”

[Alouette]

I graduated from a Tech Institute (it's a University now) and everyone was into studying and going to class. No political rallys or activities whatsoever.

That was 20 years ago.

[cynwoody]

Many of us have no use for the Sarah Palin wing of conservatism.

Palin supported Steve Forbes in 1996. Indeed, the Huffington Post called her "Steve Forbes in a Skirt".

[rabscuttle385]

Liberalism is rampant in the unix-pukes. MS guys tend to lean conservative.

And yet so many Freepers like using the free OpenOffice productivity software, GNU/Linux operating systems, and Firefox Web browser instead of expensive Microsoft Office, Windows, and IE.

[word_warrior_bob]

Many of us have no use for the Sarah Palin wing of conservatism.

____________________

This is your first post here newbie? What’s your problem with the Palin “wing”?

[rabscuttle385]

Engineering types...CS types...

What happens when you mix the two? ;)

[Recovering Ex-hippie]

I want MY surgeon to be a rabid , competititve, cold hearted decisive character!

[Still Thinking]

She was also called "Dick Cheney with tits", which opened my eyes to the error of my previous belief in Cheney's perfection. That's one time I learned something from liberals.

[ml/nj]

Not where I am by a longshot! The lefties keep VERY quiet, if they exist at all. I'm in NJ. I assume that if I went up north it would be different. But competence doesn't seem to matter much there, and they don't like to discuss anything. They know, so what's to talk about.

ML/NJ

[Clock King]

What happens when you mix the two? ;)

Probably they tend toward "moderate". That's how I was! :-) (I'm a firmware engineer -- EE degree who writes extremely low-level code).