Technology culture as youth oriented
Jakob Svensson
Abstract
This chapter focuses on how technology culture, from the beginning, has been geared towards the youth. Early hacking, for example, had a teenage rebellion to it, anti-authoritarian prankish boys in, first, the computer labs of established American universities and later in the garages in middle-class Silicon Valley suburbia. This resonates in the industry's more recent turn towards entrepreneurship. The chapter thus provides a backdrop to how ageism in digital technologies can be understood and made sense from a more historical and cultural perspective. The chapter also discusses how technology culture's many different roots and influences have made certain tensions apparent, for example, left-leaning hippies versus libertarian entrepreneurs. How such tensions are navigated also points towards a fundamentally youth-oriented culture. Empirically the chapter is based on an extensive interview study conducted between 2018 and 2020.