I hope you are wrong about this. And my tone is more than slightly hysterical - I am downright panicking. If Ayn-Randian ideology has taken over the hearts of young Silicon Valley startup entrepreneurs, and if that is the current way of thinking in Northern California of all places, then we've got a problem.

But I think you're wrong. I think what we're reading here is not a heartfelt, confident business or social ideology, but a hacker's frame of mind. A hacker mostly thinks about how to do things well. Sometimes he thinks about what to do. Only rarely does he consider the question of why, in the grand scheme of things. Very few hackers consider the social ramifications of technology, and when they do, it's usually very short-term.