[imiric]

> I also noted how far-left and anti-capitalistic many talks/speaker are.

Why is this suprising? The hacker culture is rooted in anti-establishment philosophy, spun off from the hippy movement of the 1960s. This is not a regional thing.

It's more than a bit ironic that this site is called "hacker news", yet is hosted by a company that holds opposite ideals. :) The term "hacker" has largely lost its original meaning, most notably from being vilified by mainstream media.

Hack the planet! \m/

[saturn8601]

We come to these conferences to "see where the puck is moving to" not to hear someone's fantasy tales. So far this has been true in the technical tracks. How many times have there been a talk at CCC that was the unveiling of new ways of thinking in tech? Too many to count.

CCC also has a strong history of debuting talks in the social track that really moved the needle in the 2010s. Think about the Wikileaks talks or Snowden or how about the Snowden Angels?

Recently this has not been the case in the social tracks (they got this past years political changes extremely wrong) and so the question is where is the conference making a mistake and how to course correct?

[luckylion]

It's "wow, what cool things I can do with this new tech" vs "wow, this new tech is pretty dangerous, let me show you" -- it's a very different mindset. In the end, you can be anti-establishment all you want, it's very hard to let go of your culture.

[ahartmetz]

It was a pretty strong dissonance when reading some, let's say, Hunter S. Thompson short story, how "US conventional" some of his view were. Pretty sure it would be the same for any counterculture in any country. A counterculture doesn't actually rebuild its "host" culture from scratch, it just disagrees about a couple of things.

[karmakurtisaani]

Well said. However, a counter culture can't diverge too far simply because otherwise it will disappear in the fringes of society with only a handful of followers.

A lot of hippies were not vegetarian or accepting of gays, they just wanted to do drugs and rebel against authority.

[BoingBoomTschak]

The establishment has changed "a bit", though.

[bowsamic]

Are you saying that the establishment is anti capitalist?

[BoingBoomTschak]

No, but it's certainly pro "individualism" and hedonism. Anything that can dilute the moral fiber of a nation to make it easier to rule.

You'd have to be delusional to think you're fighting The Man^tm when you stand for immigration and LGBT, at least in western Europe.

[bowsamic]

Oh yes, I definitely agree, but I think that the CCC are aware of the risks of neoliberalism