You know all those stories about companies started in garages? The garages were still an indication of being from a family that was economically well off. The mid to late 80's ushered in neoliberalism in full force and began the process of cranking the inequality back up. It was the tail end of a time where capitalists still had to fear the USSR before shifting into its fall followed by the rise of policies from people like Thatcher and Reagan. Combine that with credit card debt and whatnot and I'd bet there's a pretty good overlay of moderately secure families putting tech into the hands of young hackers and nerds just before you see it all start to crumble. Also the commodification of all that tech IP, the rise of microsoft, ibm, xerox, sun, etc. absolutely put a damper on the hacker culture.
You know all those stories about companies started in garages? The garages were still an indication of being from a family that was economically well off. The mid to late 80's ushered in neoliberalism in full force and began the process of cranking the inequality back up. It was the tail end of a time where capitalists still had to fear the USSR before shifting into its fall followed by the rise of policies from people like Thatcher and Reagan. Combine that with credit card debt and whatnot and I'd bet there's a pretty good overlay of moderately secure families putting tech into the hands of young hackers and nerds just before you see it all start to crumble. Also the commodification of all that tech IP, the rise of microsoft, ibm, xerox, sun, etc. absolutely put a damper on the hacker culture.