The Californian Ideology is either pro-corporate or corporate-naive. Either technology itself is deterministically going to democratize things (like the Internet was an auto-democratic force, they thought—or now AI is going to help liberate everyone, hah) and/or you just don’t need to worry about private interests.
But private (corporate) interests didn’t just come out of nowhere. The Internet was created by the US state (federal) sector and then handed over for commercialization around the Clinton era. Should anyone be surprised about the turn of events?
Now the author, just as naive as the rest, talks about reigning in corprorate interests by enacting laws. And who is gonna make the politicians do that? The rich control the government. Many of them are the tech-rich.
Biden said in his farewell address that he was worried about a rising Tech Robber Baron era. Yikes. Someone should have done something about that. Like the departing president, perhaps?[1]
All of this was mainly done by the rich. Not by nerds (because not all nerds are rich). But the less wealthy California nerds who bought into the Californian Ideology helped it along.
[1] It’s not that he did nothing. It’s that he did a half-spirited job of it. If he really meant and was motivated by his own words he would have done more.