playful cleverness

8/14/2019 Playful Cleverness

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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!

playful cleverness

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