[bvw]

There was a transition in the early eighties. The cohort of people doing software and teaching software changed. It was engineers and accountant-types. It switched to liberal arts types as the field opened up.

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.

[cynwoody]

There was a transition in the early eighties. The cohort of people doing software and teaching software changed. It was engineers and accountant-types. It switched to liberal arts types as the field opened up.

The transition predated the eighties, at least among the significant innovators. Remember What the Dormouse Said.