In general I'm not crazy about stuff that is based around praising one's self. I get a lot of marketing on facebook that assumes I want to buy t-shirts that brag about how awesome I am because of the different groups I belong to - including my age, gen-x, etc. I find it to be off putting.

That said - I see the author's point about how we grew up with a sense of the wide open possibility. There is a feeling I had as a teen that this new world of computing made anything possible. I had posters of EA devs up on my walls and my friends and I wrote our own games that we played.

As things moved along and dev tools got expensive I lost some of that optimism until I ran into FOSS in the early 00s. That reignited the whole thing for me. But I think it will be a constant battle against many forces to keep open platforms, tools and networks. At the same time I think regulation has to be a part of it. It's a balancing act like so much of life.

I think the key is finding how it impacts the majority of people and helping them understand why it matters to them. They may not understand technical or philosophical arguments - they need to see the real impact on their daily lives.