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What was it like back then?
by deadbabe 2y ago
What was it like back then?
- bayindirh 2y agoTwo words: "Xerox PARC".
- michaelt 2y agoWell, the American tech industry as always had some big corporate players who are more than happy to sell census counting and alphabetization equipment to the third reich, and won't look too closely at what they're doing with it - so long as it's profitable and complies with local laws. So we shouldn't pretend there was some glorious golden age. But there was a time when SV was a lot more passionate and freewheeling, and beliefs like "information wants to be free" were a lot more widely repeated.
- deadbabe 2y agoIsn’t “information wants to be free” the rallying cry of hackers who want to leak all private data?
- JohnFen 2y agoNot really. That rallying cry was subverted by crackers, but to hackers it means something very different.
- eesmith 2y agoI think this view is only of the hacker subculture of SV in the 1970s. I don't think it was shared by the semiconductor industry which gave SV it name, nor the defense industry which was also there.
- michaelt 2y agoRight, but a lot of modern SV companies like to pretend they're descended from the hacker subculture. Just look at the name of this website :)