Cory Doctorow has an excellent examination of this issue (which he coins "nerd determinism") and another similar issue ("nerd fatalism") in his Guardian piece "The problem with nerd politics": http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/may/14/problem-ner...

For those on the go, here's a direct link to the podcast of said column: http://archive.org/download/Cory_Doctorow_Podcast_229/Cory_D...