By Mike Elgan, Computerworld
It’s an election year, so you’re going to hear a lot about the “culture wars.” You know: The endless battle between conservative and progressive values. I want to discuss the culture wars too — but not the political culture wars. I’m talking about the technology culture wars, the endless conflict between, for lack of a better term, “geeks” — technical people who like to tinker with tech — and “noobs” — nontechnical people who want gadgets to “just work.” (These might be vaguely offensive terms to some. But I think they’re equally offensive to both groups. Gimme a break, there are no better labels than geeks and noobs.) Anyway, I believe that if you scratch the surface of many recurring online debates and differences of opinion — the PC vs. Mac, Android vs. iPhone and Google+ vs. Facebook conflicts, as well as arguments over issues like privacy — you’ll find that it’s often really a culture-war argument between geeks and noobs.
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9226884/Dispatch_from_the_technology_culture_wars
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