Ever scratched your head wondering what drives people like Gates, Ellison, Jobs, Dell, Zuckerberg, Yang, Dorsey, or hundreds of others who gave “birth” to the autonomous world of technology and wonder where they “fit” in the social-political world we live in?

If so, you need to understand the origins of ‘Silicon Valley’ and the people who were instrumental in innovating technology during the 1980s and 1990s.

What most of the world does not understand about technology people is that they are libertarians, not conservatives, not liberals, not democrats or republicans (even though they side with both of them from time to time). People do not get that “Silicon Valley” is a different mindset than most. The average person who votes, who watches the nightly news, does not grasp what drives technology people, and I am not sure they can because it is a world where leaders emerge because of what they create, innovate, and share or “borrow” from each other, and not what you control. If any, control comes much later in the life cycle and is usually displayed as owning more possessions and “toys” or land and being more philanthropic. It is a world full of ADHD and ADD and brilliant people, often introverted but compensate for their ‘introvert-ism‘ by being on stage and in the public’s view through media.

The world of technology, the world of ‘Silicon Valley,’ created the term ‘Technolibertarianism” (sometimes referred to as cyberlibertarianism) is a ‘political-social philosophy’ with roots in the early days of the Internet and technology. “Silicon Valley” is a world where hackers, cypherpunks, geek culture types, and those who emerged from a world of humanities (because at the time, there was no academic world of programming, computer science other than engineering), and the people would gather in Silicon Valley (where else could logic majors find work?) in the early 1990s and be highly influenced by ‘American libertarianism‘ from their past academic life.

In the people’s minds in the world of “Silicon Valley,” their philosophy was formulated as they experienced their world of technology, focused on minimizing government regulation, censorship, or anything else in the way of a “free” World Wide Web. In this case, the word “free” refers to the meaning of libre (no restrictions), not gratis (no cost). Out of their experiences of innovating new technologies, the people focused on policies that would always be considerate of civil liberties.

• The policy should oppose government over-regulation when it concerns innovation and technology.
• The policy that provides rational, free-market incentives is the best choice, is highly investor-based, and requires little oversight.

Today, we see the second generation of ‘Silicon Valley’ people emerge, carrying some of the baggage of their forefathers and mothers and being shaped and molded by the societal phase change they grew up experiencing. The question remains: Will the greater good prevail?