A plausibe "big-picture" explaination is attributing it (partly) to several intertwined cultural movements, originating or being popular in California in the 60

A plausibe "big-picture" explaination is attributing it (partly) to several intertwined cultural movements, originating or being popular in California in the 60s. They focussed on individual self-improvement, particularly the human potential movement with its idea of self-actualization as highest virtue (See Maslow’s pyramid of needs) and claims that we "only use 10% of our brains". Human potential matches some other ideas that are influential in the tech industry, like frontier-ism and libertarianism and engineering technological solutions for problems (Herbert Simon might be an example for putting forward a problem focussed model of thinking, which also influenced Artificual Intelligence and thus probably the rather AI-influenced early hacker culture). A nice introduction to this perspective is Christina Dunbar-Hester ’s talk on "Hacking Diversity": https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11569-hacking_diversity_the_politics_of_inclusion_in_open_technology_cultures https://media.ccc.de/v/rc3-11569-hacking_diversity_the_polit...