Surely this is part of tech's own, positive, legend of itself? Is it "disrespectful" when it's part of HAKMEM or the Jargon file? Isn't this where all the "disruption" ideology comes from?

I think you're reading a sarcasm into it that I'm not seeing?

> "Plenty of companies have similarly appropriated hacker culture – hackers are the ur-disrupters – but none have gone as far as Facebook."

I think it's actually painting Zuckerberg as a "wannabe" and in some way not a real hacker?

It's possible - I've also read his book and some other work of his. He's a very good writer, though, so if it's there, it's almost certainly intentional.

If you follow that paragraph, 'With their free time, they played epic pranks, which happened to draw further attention to their own cleverness – ' is then followed up by Foer's description of them as the enemy of suited bureaucracy. It makes you imagine young people going against a paternal figure, but the examples he chooses both cut their credibility and show that their fight was ultimately useless. It also provides better juxtaposition for his ultimate point about Zuckerberg's perversion of the hacker ethos.

You're right, he is painting Zuckerberg as a wannabe. A boy who wants to emulate naive heroes but doesn't have the 'technical virtuosity' and ends up exploiting the culture he's almost but not quite a part of, turning it from something fairly harmless into something that Foer believes is extremely dangerous for society.

The disregard for rules, the commons and so forth is what makes it so easy for Zuckerberg to turn it into a pseudo-subversive marketing reel. It's easy to twist it that way, and Zuckerberg is not the only guy doing it.

It's the Guardian, that's pretty much to be expected.

There are two forces. One is the series of gaffs by Google, FB, and Amazon and the resultant public awareness of their power. The second is Trump's election. When he set up his initial meetings with business leaders at the beginning of his administration, the tech giants were notably not invited. He sent the signal that they were not part of the real economy.

Say what you want about Trump's morals or ineffectiveness, but things like that send signals across a society whether we like it or not. "Greed is good" came from Reagan's election in the 80s. Tech is losing its shine in our culture.

Hmm? https://techcrunch.com/2016/12/14/donald-trump-meets-with-te...

"President-elect Donald Trump met with some of the most prominent executives from the tech industry today at Trump Tower, with investor Peter Thiel and Vice President-elect Mike Pence at his side. Trump opened the meeting with CEOs from Google, Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and others by thanking Thiel for his support."

"Attendees included Eric Schmidt and Larry Page of Google, Tim Cook of Apple, Satya Nadella and Brad Smith of Microsoft, Jeff Bezos of Amazon (who expressed his excitement that Trump’s administration could be “the innovations administration“), Safra Catz of Oracle, Chuck Robbins of Cisco and Sheryl Sandberg of Facebook. Thiel’s business partner, Palantir CEO Alex Karp, attended as well."

Seems like different sectors just had different meetings? Which meeting specifically were you thinking of?

http://www.businessinsider.com/business-leaders-trump-white-...

http://money.cnn.com/2016/12/14/technology/trump-tech-summit...

Your supreme leader will find it difficult forcibly seizing the hundreds of billions of dollars from the current biggest drivers of the economy to get them out of "his" economy.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/09/when-si...

I'll clarify, for the downvoters: I don't think the statement I made is an example of any common fallacy, but it is definitely not a straw man. If I were to say that he was arguing something he was not and then attacked that argument, or if I used him as a representation of all people making his arguments that would be a straw man. Maybe you could argue that it is ad hominem, but I'm not really attacking his character, merely his choice of words.

You are attacking him, by projecting your opinion of his motivations for writing the article, imaginary motivations rooted in "his" dislike for an industry.

Ascribing motivations to someone else I associate with straw man fallacy. And, you're correct -- attacking him for these instead of addressing his arguments can be defined as ad hominem.

They aren't actually imaginary - this article is right in line with his book, which he wrote after being fired by one of the founders of Facebook. He's written and spoken quite extensively on this. Further, I didn't say those were his motivations for writing the article. I said that those were his motivations for writing it in the manner that he did.

>Ascribing motivations to someone else I associate with straw man fallacy.

That isn't what a straw man is, though.

As for ad hominem - I'm not actually attacking him, I'm taking issue with the way he wrote the article and is characterizing a 33 year old man that has achieved immense and improbable success, married and with children as a 'good boy.'

I did not read anything there that was openly hostile to us. Critic of unintended consequences, yes; but that reflects more on our collective disregard for such than on then author's biases.

If you had a hard time reading through it, that reflects positivelly on your character: It means you are not a self-serving cynic yet. The question is how to channel that emotional energy into making our profession one that serves the public as it claims to be, instead of preying on the public as more often than not we end up being.