I'm a 23 year old with purple hair, but I'm also a PhD student at a top 10 university for computer science. I've hung out in tons of squats and punk houses, and briefly been a street kid, but I got a 2380 on my SATs. I lived in a non-residential warehouse for months - months when I was taking Physics, Linear Algebra, Computer Science and Sociology 321 - Class and Inequality. I've dug through dozens of dumpsters, and I've hiked hundreds and hundreds of miles on the Appalachian Trail. I've been in jail and won the prize for Best Undergraduate Research at my university.
I fell out of touch with the anarchopunkier half of my friends when I got serious about artificial intelligence and computer science - I love these things and they're very important to me, and in the coffeeshops we always talked about how to get rid of tyrants and inequality. I have always believed in technology. OLPC, Ubuntu, Khan Academy, Coursera, solar panels, cell networks - the list goes on.
Startup folks and street punks have a lot of similar ideas about what we want, but really different aesthetics. The punks I've known are much more well-read and just as bright as the grad students I spend time with now. On the other hand, they're in denial about capitalism. Both groups have a lot to learn from each other, if only they can look over the other's smarminess/smelliness.
I fell out of touch with the anarchopunkier half of my friends when I got serious about artificial intelligence and computer science - I love these things and they're very important to me, and in the coffeeshops we always talked about how to get rid of tyrants and inequality. I have always believed in technology. OLPC, Ubuntu, Khan Academy, Coursera, solar panels, cell networks - the list goes on.
Startup folks and street punks have a lot of similar ideas about what we want, but really different aesthetics. The punks I've known are much more well-read and just as bright as the grad students I spend time with now. On the other hand, they're in denial about capitalism. Both groups have a lot to learn from each other, if only they can look over the other's smarminess/smelliness.