Perhaps the main difference is that the medical and legal professions have traditions, however debased. During the decade following the invention of the PC, the absence of any such tradition seemed appealing, particularly since the digital pioneers were emanating from the counterculture. In my limited contact with current and former Microsoft workers, I've noticed two conversational tendencies that can, unfortunately, be traced to the counterculture. They can be extremely aggressive thinkers, questioning basic assumptions about all politics, all communication, all social organization prior to the digital era. They are not simply parroting the Microsoft line when they mock the pathetic behemoth that is government for sticking its nose into postmodern commerce.
Gates still looks uncomfortable in a suit.
It was a crusade against mindless business practices, and Bill Gates won. But any hope of an alternative culture from which a more soulful way of conducting commerce might emerge is gone. Greed in, greed out. The nascent Web lifestyle already hints that, without consciousness and countervailing forces, our failings will haunt us in this brave new world. The public hasn't been crying out for Web sites devoted to the Bob's Big Boy in Burbank, California, yet here we are.