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Playful clevernessPlayful cleverness
History and Visions of New MediaIMKE 2007
Kaido Kikkas
Distributed under the Creatve Commons BY-SA license (2.5 or newer).
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Hacker...?Hacker...?
My website was hacked, blah blah Typical image in most mainstream media:
ingenious yet malicious hi-tech vandal There are constructive and knowledgeable people
calling themselves hackers too
http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/html/H/hacker.html Controversy?
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Definition in this lectureDefinition in this lecture
a hacker is (mostly but not necessarily) acomputer professional with innovative mindsetand a passion for exploration
also a tech subculture deeply rooted in the historyof technology
Hacker ethic worded by Raymond: "The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positivegood, and that it is an ethical duty of hackersto share their expertise by writing open-sourcecode and facilitating access to information and tocomputing resources wherever possible."
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The Forefathers: MIT The Forefathers: MIT
MIT Tech Model Railroad Club, founded 1946 The Signals & Power Subcommittee First computer science classes in 1959 (TX-0) PDP-1 in 1961 Project MAC in 1963 MIT AI Lab in 1970 Foundation of the culture
Recommended reading: Hackers by Steven Levy
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No businessNo business
Computer science ~ rocket science Too few people to form a market Military undertones Software was machine-specific Also, management kept hackers apart from
managers and bookkeepers
=> Playful cleverness: original display of creativity unhindered by market motives
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SubcultureSubculture
Sharing culture (programming into a drawer) Non-standard use of technology (music, chess,
games like Spacewar) Specific jargon (-P, T/NIL, MU!) Hacking of Chinese food Puns and wordplay (Government Property
- Do Not Duplicate => GovernmentDuplicity - Do Not Propagate (on keys)
Also: MIT hack tradition (seehttp://hacks.mit.edu)
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The early Hacker Ethic The early Hacker Ethic
1. Access to computers and anything whichmight teach you something about the way theworld works should be unlimited and total.Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
"walk the walk, not only talk the talk"; a root of later hacker ethic
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2. All information should be free. Historical undertones (limited resources) yet the
base of sharing in its many forms
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3. Mistrust authority promotedecentralization.
Democracy rather than anarchy it fights themisuse of authority, not authority as such Decentralization has been a central feature of the
Internet (and all network-based development)since its early days!
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4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking,not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or
position. Equality! (Gender, education, race, worldview...) Peter Deutsch, 12 Gender- and color-blindness of hackers -
a positive effect of text-only network channels: all participants judged by thequality of their input, not their personal
features! (suggested by the Jargon File)
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5. You can create art and beauty on a computer. Not so evident in early days MIT hackers were
the first to define computer aesthetics Ct. current WordPress slogan: Code is poetry Raymond's points for style - hackers
are no nerds at all?
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6. Computers can change your life for the better.
New, non-traditional application (the ping-pongrobot) a root of today's free culture
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Decline and rebirthDecline and rebirth
Early 80s: split in MIT AI Lab RMS, the Last of True Hackers (Levy) 1983 GNU 1989/91 GNU GPL 1991 Linux 1992-93 *BSD ~1995 LAMP and Red Hat 1996-97 - KDE & GNOME
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The Cathedral and the Bazaar The Cathedral and the Bazaar
Set of essays by Eric S. Raymond, originallyfrom 1997
Business reasoning of free models Open Source vs Free Software ESR as a colourful character
Hacker-HOWTO:http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/hacker-howto.html
Helped to develop a new generation of hacker ethic
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ESR: main criteriaESR: main criteria
attitude - "Do you identify with the goals andvalues of the hacker community?"
skills - "Do you speak code, fluently?" status - "Has a well-established member of the
hacker community ever called you a hacker?"
All three are needed to be a hacker!
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Attitude pointsAttitude points
The world is full of fascinating problems waitingto be solved
No problem should ever have to be solved twice Boredom and drudgery are evil Freedom is good
Attitude is no substitute for competence
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Skill pointsSkill points
Learn how to program Get one of the open-source Unixes and learn to
use and run it Learn how to use the World Wide Web and write
HTML If you don't have functional English, learn it
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Status pointsStatus points
Write open-source software Help test and debug open-source software Publish useful information Help (to) keep the infrastructure working Serve the hacker culture itself
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MotivationMotivation
Linus' Law: survival
social status fun
Ct. Wozniak's H = F 3
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Hackers of the new centuryHackers of the new century
GNU, Linux, Wikipedia, OpenCourseWare... See: Hacker Ethic by Pekka Himanen, also other
writings of Himanen and Manuel Castells Medieval vs Protestant vs hacker ethic
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Himanen on Hacker EthicHimanen on Hacker Ethic
Protestant Ethic money
work flexibility goal orientation, result accountability optimality stability
Hacker Ethic passion
freedom (hacker) work ethic (hacker) money ethic nethic (hacker network
ethic) caring creativity
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Friday vs SundayFriday vs Sunday
Friday as the day of Crucifixion but also as the last day of working week
Sunday as the day of Resurrection but also as the day for rest and reflection
Estonian phapev lit. 'sacred day'
In which day do we live?
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ConclusionsConclusions
The hacker culture and hacker ethic do haverespectable roots in history
From the mindset of a dedicated techno-elite intothe hacker ethos of new millennium with a widearray of new ideas and possibilities
Might be the thinking model that our networked
society really needs!