Hacker Ethic in a Networked Society This document uses the GNU Free Documentation License (v1.2 or newer). PSI 2007 Kaido Kikkas

Enter the Hacker hacker vs cracker mostly (but not necessarily) a computer professional with innovative mindset and a passion for exploration Sharing the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing open-source code and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. - Hacker-HOWTO

Roots MIT TMRC Signals & Power Subcommittee 1959 – first courses in CS on TX – PDP-1 Creativity separated from bureaucracy playful cleverness, no business ~ 1980: end of the era. LMI vs Symbolics

Gnu and penguin 1983 – Richard Stallman starts GNU, birth of a new paradigm 1989/91 – GNU GPL 1991 – Linus Torvalds starts Linux 1994 – two U.S. hackers found Red Hat 90s - return of the hackers. BSD, LAMP, KDE, GNOME... New century – wider spread of hacker mindset and ethic

Hacker Ethic 1. Access to computers – and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works – should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative! Compare to Eric Raymond: The world is full of fascinating problems waiting to be solved" No problem should ever have to be solved twice Freedom is good Boredom and drudgery are evil

All information should be free. Early days: no business Intermediate period: old hippie stuff New century: the Net became the global version of the historical hacker labs

Mistrust authority – promote decentralization. Not really against authority – but against unearned and misused authority Corporate mindset is contrary to hacker mentality

Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. Colour (and other treat) blindness 12-year old Peter Deutsch in MIT lab Text-only channels as a major reason

You can create art and beauty on a computer. Aesthetics – in programming and outside Eric Raymond's points of style: music wordplay and puns martial arts fantasy Not so nerdy at all...

Computers can change your life for the better. Not just computing. MIT lab worked with computer chess computer music Ping-Pong robot games (Spacewar) The Web as "the huge, shiny hacker toy" (Raymond) => hackers go public

Linus' Law (again) Survival, social life, entertainment Linus Torvalds: "What are people ready to die for?" both social life and even enter-tainment can pass survival in some cases country, religion and families can even risk with death to fight boredom (modern extreme sports fanatics) Hackerly free contributions (e.g. writing Wikipedia) seem far less extreme...

Social context Post-scarcity (Benkler, Barnes et al) Theobald: immigrants to a new time Peter Barnes: 3 'versions' of capitalism: 1.0 – early, shortage capitalism (demand exceeded supply) 2.0 – surplus capitalism (supply exceeds demand), artificial obstacles and scarcity 3.0 – future; artificial obstacles removed

Himanen 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

Friday or 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 pühapäev – lit. 'sacred day' In which day do we live?

Final words The ripples of Internet – from strictly technical, elite phenomenon to ubiquitous changes Hacker ethos for networked society