Reading 02: Hardware ResidentSleeper

Reading 02: Hardware ResidentSleeper

2021, Feb 12    

I think it is important to spread bits and pieces of the Hacker Ethic to a wider audience, but the full and “complete” version of it doesn’t necessarily apply to everyone. I will touch on this more, but clearly throwing away the decentralization and free information part does not apply to everyone who seeks to actually make profit off of their works.

In my eyes, the “true hacker” follows this ethic fully without compromise forming the Stallmans or Davises of the world. However, it seemed like the “Hardware Hackers” were far more entrepreneurial and cognizant of the monetary value of the fruits of their labor. A great example of this is the Homebrew Computer Club, which seemed very similar to the “true hacker” clubs in the first part of this book. The big difference I noticed while reading was that they made companies and sold boards they made while hacking. This is something unfathomable for a “true hacker” in my eyes, though I think it’s a step in the right direction within reason. I feel these two groups are similar in that “Hardware Hackers” follow a great deal of the hacker ethic as well. The previously mentioned Homebrew Computer Club open sourced their schematics and code and had some of these centralized places to share and build on ideas as a group.

This entrepreneurial spirit is both good and bad, where it completely shifted the hacker culture towards billion-dollar companies, but largely broke the idea of hacking together for the spirit of it. A great thing about this shift though was these hackers were able to create and sell affordable technology to the masses, like the Apple I or even the Tiny BASIC interpreter. This sparked a huge boom of “regular” people in tech and lead to the world we know today. I think largely this change is for the better, from the “true hacker” to these new “hardware hackers”. Sure, they could be seen as more selfish and not following all of the tenants of the hacker ethics. However, the impact is drastically different of these hackers in their ability to give the people tech as opposed to just staying in and making software that does have innovations but is so narrow in scope. Largely, I think this helped decrease elitism and start the snowball effect rolling of making tech widely available (though I will concede tech was still very male dominated in this era).

I consider myself an optimist and think that though there are serious negative effects of technology, it is largely a force for good. Think of the great strides it has helped us take in society in terms of availability of resources. Wikipedia, stackoverflow, etc. all come from this idea of widespread tech. I think it is a great necessity to throw away some of the hacker ethic if it means that everyone (to a certain extent) has an equal access to information. The ability for people to be empowered by technology to make a living is so powerful.

I empathize with “true hackers”, but some things just need to be close sourced and monetized. With the creation of mass technology comes a mass need for people working in technology. As I mentioned last reading, the hacker ethic and the idea of a “true hacker” is just not scalable to the general population. Unfortunately, a lot of people like to be paid for the work they do. I think that although this is kind of sad, it makes the world overall way more productive and normalizes technology even more. However, there are happy mediums I think that we can utilize these hacker ethics as best as possible. A lot of companies open source some of their resources to share to the world and collaborate, and that has proven wildly successful especially today. This works in a sense for the parts of companies that aren’t the “secret sauce”, or what makes them viable as a standalone business. I have also seen service providers do this, where they freely provide their information, but charge to host instances of it and manage it. I personally see these actions as probably as close to the 2nd code in the hacker ethics.

Overall, I think everyone should be able to access computers, which is coincidentally the first rule of the hacker ethics. I think it is very important to spread the ideals of it, but with a grain of salt. They can’t reasonably be followed in today’s technological ecosystem of mass use. I absolutely believe that we should at least modify some parts of the hacker ethic in order for mass innovation and impact. I honestly feel so strongly about this because I truly believe in wide access to technology, and I think compromising on some things lead to a better overall society. So I would say it is fairly important to spread this, but perhaps a modernized version?

– Sam