There are reports coming out of San Francisco, that corporate buses used to ferry tech workers from the city to Silicon Valley, 30 or 40 miles to the south, are being targeted by assertive guerrilla campaign of disruption.
Study by researchers at Berkeley back up their frustrations that rents around stops used by Google buses were up to 20 percent higher than in comparable areas. Berkeley also found that 30-40% of tech workers would in fact move closer to their jobs if the bus service did not exist.
This article reminded me of another article I picked up from the San Francisco Bay Guardian, when I was in San Francisco to cover Oracle Open World in 1996.
It spoke about how the cyber-libertarian ethos of the Silly Con Valley would lead back to a time when there was no social protection for workers and the poor, like during the Industrial revolution of the 19th Century – a time when children were made to work in factories 18 hours a day.
That article in the San Francisco Bay Guardian quoted several authors, one of them being Paulina Borsook, a former contributor to Wired Magazine and an Silicon Valley insider who became repulsed by the elitist attitude of tech workers and technopreneurs in Silly Con Valley.
In all my over 11 years writing about the information technology industry for the IT section (which I shall call the IT Section) of one mainstream national newspaper, I never could feel part of the team, which I sensed had an arrogant attitude at being the “elite journalists” of The Paper.
They were just colleagues whom I interacted with in line with work but I was much happier to socialise with my colleagues in the Business Desk, News Desk, Entertainment Desk, etc., and I got on warmly with IT journalists with our competitor publications who were more down to earth.
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s, this IT section was attracting a lot of readers on the days it was published, and was earning much revenue for The Paper but today, it’s just a few pages a week in a pull out.
I didn’t understand it at the time but many in my IT section had bought into the neo-liberal, cyber-libertarian, Silly Con Valley & Internet culture, which I only came to understand more about when I came across the San Francisco Bay Guardian article.
Now the cyber-libertarians wanted to roll back the gains all these reformers and revolutionaries had achieved for the workers and poor. That’s why I despise them and their von Hayekist, von Misesist, Ayn Randist, etc. ideology.
Both liberals and libertarians are liberal on Social issues and cultural such, such as anti racism, gay rights, personal freedom to say, write, think and act as one wishes as long as it does not harm others
But on Economic issues, liberals are interventionist and believe in government regulation to protect the economic well being of poorer and disadvantaged members of society through laws.
Libertarians on the other hand are right wing Anarchists and believe in minimal or no regulation and believe in allowing the free play of market forces to redress all ills in society.
Pauline Borsook later wrote a book, “Cyberselfish” which dealt with the issue in greater detail and I was one of the first to buy it.
Many journos of the IT Section were indeed Cyberselfish, and also conceited and arrogant. Some of them were computer gamers and played network games on their computers after 5.00pm. Now I had no issue with that, but they were not content to play games but blasted the sound through ghetto blasters (mini compos), totally inconsiderate of the handful of colleagues like me who needed to concentrate on writing stories.
It was like trying to do serious work in the middle of a gaming arcade and despite us raising the issue in
editorial meetings, they quietened down for a while then were back to it again soon after, and those of us who had work to complete had to leave our room and work on computers elsewhere in The Paper where it was quieter.
That’s why I totally despise computer gamers and the elitist, “me first,” cyber-libertarian attitude of such IT journalist types who think themselves “great,” “hot shot” computer gamers.
Well, now the IT Section is a shadow of its former self, and my time working at the IT section reminds me of the backlash in San Francisco against Google tech workers and Google, blaming them for rising housing prices.
This article raises the same issues Paulina Borsook mentioned in Cyberselfish.
It also debunks what “futurist” paperback writers claimed that the information and services society would be the “salvation” of workers as manufacturing jobs which provided decent pay for many are offshored to lower wage countries. Well now the IT jobs are being offshored as well but how many can “move up the value chain”?
Meanwhile, Malaysia is sinking into the pit of shit as manufacturing jobs leave for our lower wage neighbours such as Thailand, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, etc., which are seeing rising standards of living.
Can the Moribund Super Corridor save Malaysia?
One Saturday afternoon, the Group Agency Manager of a leading unit trust firm said that a CIMB fund manager briefing identified six “earth based” industry sectors which would thrive in 2014 – i.e. oil & gas, construction & property, plantation, railway, plastics and the electrical & electronics sector.
Finance, wood-based and water-based sectors won’t do well this year.
The IT sector?
Pah !!!!
The new Chairman of PIKOM (National ICT Association of Malaysia) told a Chinese New Year dinner last Thursday that the IT sector was in for a rough ride this year.
I later asked him a direct question – “will the shit hit the fan for the IT industry in Malaysia this year” and he more or less confirmed it.
That reminds me to call my remisier today to buy stocks in these sectors and hold till July.
IT BYTES BACK! says: Are we placing Too Much of our Hopes and Dreams upon the IT sector, to the exclusion of Everything Else?
