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?
IBM and the BUNCH ruled economically, but the disruptive change that lead to computing as we now know it came from outside, mostly.
Dick also lacks hair and stylish glasses.
They are. Actually, there's a ton of libertarians in them.
The libs are just very, very loud.
And high heels.
Because it’s not true...been in the business 28 years...hardware engineer types are very much to the right... programer/admin types (”techiee”types) light weights go left
Now you're making the assumption that smart makes good. This is a very bad assumption. I remember being forced to watch a Bill Moyers special in an English Lit class and he was talking about how shocked he was that Nazis enjoyed classical music to the point that it would move them to tears--and then order the gassing of 1,000 Jews the next day. He called that a failure of "the liberal dream". I think "the liberal dream" as he described it could be stated that once one was "smart" or "cultured" enough, then they will be "good". It's a kind of perversion of religion so that there are no "god" elements left.
The real key to your pondering is that geeks like new, and liberal is considered "new" and conservative is considered "old". It fits into their worldview of progression and evolution over time. Whatever is old is "primitive" and "obsolete", and whatever is new is "advanced". Therefore any principles gleaned from the Bible are "primitive" and "obsolete" simply by virtue of the Bible's age. Also, a little more subtly, "change" by this worldview is always good, because "change" is a step from old to new.
How to fix this? Well one way is to repackage conservatism as being "new", which will probably fail. The second more difficult option is to educate people with this worldview that new ideas introduced throughout history have had the ability to destroy cultures, stall scientific advancement, and many times are not even new.
Perhaps you should choose a different venue to in which to slam our candidate.
“Many of us have no use for the Sarah Palin wing of conservatism”
Name names for us, would you? Palin is the most popular Conservative since Ronald Reagan.
“Techs are by and large economic conservatives like myself.”
From your posts, I doubt that you are even that.
hf1
Since Oct 24, 2008
***********************
Welcome to Free Republic.
Software development is solitary activity not requiring social skills. Most developers have at best the social skills of a nerd. Nerds feel rejected and angry. Socialists are also angry people who lash out at the success of others. They fit together.
Seems reasonable, though I'm somewhat geeky myself (knowledgeable and competent with the stuff of geekdom, yet still semi-functional in society), and I don't automatically make the assumption that anything new is better than anything old. I realize that's a very small sample, and therefore doesn't really prove anything.
Simple ... because they think it is “hip” and “cool” to be a Leftist
This is true. The techs that keep their mouths shut when politics is discussed? Very likely conservative. 1 loud voice drowns out 1000 silent voices.
This is true of many professional fields, not just techs. Liberals have the diaherrea of the mouth in general.
My hubby is in the military. Now you know they’re for McCain 3 to 1 or something like that... but my husband is harassed and evangelized by Obama supporting coworkers everyday.
The vast majority of people I work with in IT are conservative. Of course, I’m not a developer and I don’t work on OSS if I can help it.
You mean like Microsoft, Oracle, Intel, Apple, etc? Oh wait, those are all west coast companies and still going strong. East coast has all the failed computing companies (DEC) and the ones that only survive because of a massive influx of tax payer money (IBM). Other failures that I'm unsure as to location would be Novell, Compaq and HP. HP still makes excellent printers and support devices, but their computers were junk. Novell is west coast, I think, and still in business, but no where near where they were or maybe could have been.
How can you not consider Commodore a failure, are they not out of business yet? I think Xerox is east coast, but since they weren't capable of hanging onto to their patients, nor getting the vast majority of their inventions and break- throughs to market before their competitors were able to, the are an abject failure considering where they should be today.
I didn't mean "anything". I meant in general as trends are concerned. I'm sure every geek that holds a new means better view holds some exceptions to the rule.
And the shyer ones will believe whatever that girl that pays them some attention believes.
Programmers are not engineers. They don't even approach the intelligence and educational level of engineers. Engineers do programming as a sideline for their more important taskings, like building a bridge, making a rocket that goes to the moon, constructing a 100 story skyscraper, and designing the computers that programmers put their silly little code on.
Engineers are creatures of logical, rational thought and reasoning. hence you will find few of them in the liberal ranks - it just wouldn't compute.
Not having anything really important or critical to do, programmers write code, drink latte's, avoid bathing, and fortunately don't mix well with the opposite sex, fortuitously limiting their future numbers.
My uncle is a big time lib (voted for Nader twice). He says he has always liked the underdog or the outcast when it comes to technology. He prefers MACs over PCs and used to also like Commodore 64s and TI-99s. He also used to prefer BETA over VHS.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.