Maybe I'm bitter for my age, but I feel that the culture has already gone through the crossroads. I do get what you're trying to say, though, but I believe that it's the industry that finds it self at the crossroads, not the culture. The culture itself has largely been co-opted by business concerns.
I'm unconvinced. All the wacky projects that usually pop up on show HN are pretty strong signs of a culture that encourages things that don't necessarily make business sense.
The number of times I show or talk about a side project with business people and they start talking about it as something I built to generate income rather than just for my own curiousity is quite amusing. I think for certain groups of people the idea of creating for purely intellectual purposes is completely alien. It is part of the reason many companies can't hold onto real technical talent. At a cerain point intellectual richness becomes the main priority in a hackers life and the only thing that will keep them around is challenging new problems to solve.
Yet so many of those projects, when submitted, attract comments on HN from people who just don't get it. The culture is still there, but it's not as uniformly concentrated anywhere anymore. It's hard to tell what that really means. In absolute numbers there are probably more hackers with the spark now than ever, but you wouldn't be able to tell by just casually sampling the computing industry both professional and non-professional.
Them: “So, it’s a game about programming…”
Me: “Yes, it’s so much fun!”
Them: “But I program all day.”
Me: “Me too!”
Them: “The last thing I want to do when I come home is program again”
awkward silence
Them: “You’re nuts.”
