Skip to main content

Reading 00: how 2 hack

True hackers are those who subscribe to the hacker ethic. This upstart group had an intense distrust for authority and thirst for knowledge. These followers were a part of a techno priesthood of sorts, spending their days endlessly trying to improve the code and optimize every solution. And like any religious orders, they had a set of beliefs, -albeit informally codified- that all of them subscribed to. Their beliefs were far ranging: access to computers should be unlimited, information should be freely available, mistrust authority, computers can make art, computers are a force for good. These nobles goals coalesced into the spirit of the true hacker. It was an idyllic belief system which produced a group of innovative rule breakers. A group whose work would go on to shape much of modern society as we know it today with their invention.
These hackers are in many ways defiant of the Hollywood stereotypes while simultaneously meeting all of them. Hackers are an unruly group, unconcerned with the constraints of common social etiquette. More interested in what you can contribute to their project than anything else, they often behave as though they're from a different planet. Despite this abrasive exterior, they were in many ways a more equal society than the one outside their walls. Hackers welcomed anyone who could contribute to their cause, regardless of who you were. That is not to say they were a perfect bunch. Hackers were the misfits, the people who did not belong anywhere else. It is in this attitude that the origins of the Hollywood caricature took root and hackers have forever struggled since to escape it.
I think that the idea of true hackers is really interesting to read about. I think the modern day inheritor of these ideals is the rockstar programmer at Google or Microsoft. The scrawny 22 year old prodigy who single handedly produces an immense body of work fueled by multiday coding marathons with little to nothing in the way of breaks. These people wrote code for the sake of writing code. Their goals could be a trivial as thinking it sounded cool. I think in the modern day this just because attitude has died down in favor of more objective based problem solving. The first question people ask now is “what is the optimal solution to my problem” back then the question hackers asked was “what problem can I solve”.
Being a true hacker extended beyond the hacker ethic. It was an all encompassing lifestyle. It shaped how you lived in every aspect. In the modern day, there is a lot of pushback against the idea of letting one aspect of your life have so much control. Today it is considered unreasonable if your job takes so much of your time that it subsumes the rest of your free time. It is no longer admirable to stay up all night for a week straight working on some new idea. It is the mark of a person who needs to take a break and find a different hobby.
I think its difficult to decide if I want to be a “true” hacker. Like many people, I tinkered with things as a child and had my curiosity sparked. I yearned for greater access to knowledge and to understand the world around me. Reading these stories of the early hackers is at once familiar and foreign to me. While I sympathize with their general aims to learn something new, I find their singleminded dedication to the cause odd. Perhaps nothing has ever truly engaged me to that extent. In that regard I would say I do not fit the mold of the hacker as put forth by Levy. Like many others who toil away in college, perhaps I am seeking to fake it until I make it. Hoping that by continually exposure to the proper sources of radiation, I will mutate into this true hacker I have heard so much about.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Reading 02: 404 Hackers Not Found, or The Soul of a Hacker

I think it's fair to say that the hacker ethic is in many ways incompatible with modern society. While some aspects of the ethics live on in the form of the modern open source movement, and the culture of some companies, in many ways, the hacker ethic is well and truly dead. Today corporate American has steadily subsumed the hacker ethic until what is left can only be called an empty shell of its former glory. Nowhere is this more clear than in the business practices of Microsoft. Early on Bill Gates penned the now infamous "Open Letter to Hobbyists" decrying the rate at which hobbyists were freely sharing copies of Microsoft software. From then on Microsoft would lead the charge in locking down software via proprietary methods and aggressively pursuing those it found to distribute their code without permission. Microsoft was not satisfied with just making sure people paid for their software, however. They wanted to ensure theirs was the only software people were using at...
Post a Comment
Read more

Reading03: You Can (Not) Hack

Steven Levy wrote that Paul Graham was a "hacker philosopher" and his writings certainly show. Graham comes across as every philosophy grad student does: desperate to legitimize his work as cool and meaningful in the eyes of his peers. Hiding behind pedantic nitpicks over definitions, Graham attempts to elevate typing on a keyboard into a form of high art. In his piece "Hackers and Painters" Graham desperately seeks to make the point that while other computer scientists are foolishly content to allow themselves to be mislabeled, he and his hacker brethren choke under the oppressive yolk of "scientist". Throughout the piece Graham meanders through a series of critiques about higher education and how it doesn't suit the kind of work hackers do. Ultimately this leads me to wonder why he felt the need to pursue such education in the first place. It seems that what Graham truly wants is to divorce himself from the ideas of traditional programming. He whin...
Post a Comment
Read more