You're All Ugly, and Selfish.

[UG]

From: http://www.nytimes.com/library/books/072500borsook-book-review.html

(For those with a free New York Times account.)



<< &quot;...high-tech culture is ravingly antigovernment, antiregulation and &quot;psychologically brittle,&quot; that it manifests &quot;a lack of human connection and a discomfort with the core of what many of us consider it means to be human,&quot; and that its view of human nature &quot;reduces everything to the contractual, to economic rational decision making&quot; and &quot;ignores the larger social mesh that makes living as primates in groups at least somewhat bearable.&quot; In short, that high-tech culture promotes an Ayn Rand-ian view of the world, where the strong in tooth and claw survive, and the meek and unmarketable perish.

The dominant mind-set in high tech today, Ms. Borsook argues, is libertarianism -- in its many manifestations, from laissez-faire free-market economics to a more virulent form of &quot;anarcho-capitalism.&quot; It boasts an ugly, selfish code of behavior and functions as a perfect mirror of the dark side of our &quot;winner-take-all casino society.&quot; Many techies also evince an aggrieved, adversarial attitude toward the establishment or, in tech-speak, TPTB, &quot;The Powers That Be.&quot; There is a tone of adolescent paranoia reminiscent in equal parts of &quot;The X-Files&quot; and &quot;Falling Down&quot; to many technolibertarian exchanges; a sense, in Ms. Borsook's words, of &quot;testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders and too much time on their hands.&quot; >>



So many of you come to mind...

 

[ratkil]

Hey, cool, thanks!!!!

wait, that was a compliment wasn't it???????

 

[BigKev]

You are too kind.

 

[Ornery]

• Guilty, as charged!

But for some reason I don't feel too bad about it

 

[KarsinTheHutt]

How touching...

 

[mpitts]

I love it when people generalize and assume.

 

[Yeeny]

testosterone-poisoned guys with chips on their shoulders

Woo hoo, that does not fit me! Now if they said bitter women with chips on their shoulders, I am there!

 

[UG]

Well, it's a book review, so is generalized; the critique is of the high tech industry and its movers and shakers than about you, or me, though I do recognise certain, so called 'Darwinian', behaviors in the old-timers here.

 

[Farbio]

yea, gf, u always come across as a bitter woman w/ a chip on her shoulder....almost as much as princess does

 

[oldandquitemad]

And those are my GOOD points...

 

[ratkil]

chip of what???

 

[Crysla]

Well, Farbio, I superglued chip to my shoulder. I really need to keep an eye on him.

Princess

 

[UG]

It would appear the assertions of the book's author are correct, since no one yet has objected to her conclusions.

Therefore, I'll buy the book.

 

[sandorski]

I
agree that the problems noted are a reality today, but I would blame that on the end of the Cold War, not technology.

 

[Daedalus]

Yep, I can't disagree if one chooses to give up individuality for the sake of acceptance.

 

[brandc]

<< Borsook throws around enough names to suggest a knowledge of libertarianism, but it's clear she doesn't know that much about the political philosophy she's attacking. She cites Friedrich Hayek, for instance, but misspells his first name and gives a ludicrously reductive reading of The Road to Serfdom's critique of planning. &quot;All government intervention of course,&quot; she summarizes, &quot;irresistibly lead to Stalinesque collectivization of farms.&quot; Similarly, she mistakenly identifies Ludwig von Mises as the inventor of anarcho-capitalism. (Mises was no anarchist.) She mentions Murray Rothbard, the actual intellectual father of 20th-century anarcho-capitalism, to say that he borrowed the idea from Mises and then adds, in a bizarre footnote, &quot;Who knows if it was a conscious choice.&quot; >>



http://www.reason.com/0008/bk.bd.cybersilly.html




<< ...nor does Borsook?s book contribute anything to the debate on how society should be organized (or, as a libertarian would contend, allowed to organize itself). There are serious questions about
libertarian ideas, and there are those on the left willing to raise them and listen to the answers. Borsook and her appendage Scoville are not among them. They are what F.A. Hayek referred to as &quot;second-hand dealers in ideas.&quot; They are warmly welcomed in the mainstream media because they formerly worked in high tech and will feed the media the story about high tech that it wants to hear. Their goal is not to engage and challenge libertarian thinking; rather, it is to dismiss libertarians as inferior human beings, whose ideas need not even be considered. This way, the ruling elite can rest easy at night, knowing that the sleep of the masses will not be disturbed by those nasty, perverted freedom lovers. >>



http://www.lewrockwell.com/callahan/callahan7.html

 

[Edski]

Is the chip slot1, socket 370, or slotA? How can I overclock it? Do really think that I would need extra cooling for it?

 

[brandc]

Huh?

 

[Mday]

Hey, I may be ugly. And I may be selfish. But... er... what was my point?

 

[yata]

Great topic! I can't read the NY Times article...

Still, I give my shoutout to all the techies and thumbs-down the the author, who probably typed her book on the computer.

She couldn't get no love from her &quot;social mesh&quot; and had to write a book about it.

Peace out, bro.

 

[UG]

brandc;

Thank you for standing out from the crowd, and for those links. They only serve to demonstrate to me that the more I know the more I know I do not know, despite what I think.

Knowing some things well is not enough, as knowing no thing especially well is not better. Specialize, or generalize, still one is informationally handicapped.

The Universe is a harsh mistress.

The crowd is tubers on soft sofa.

 

[brandc]

UG,
Take a dose of Hayek, and call back in two weeks. A large measure of Rothbard will be an adequate substitute.

Don't believe everything you think. (That sounds like something you'd say, esp. w/ regard to physics - or metaphysics.)

 

[flood]

Isnt &quot;UG&quot; short for &quot;Ugly&quot;?

 

[brandc]

Red, you funny!