I Wanna Be a Hacker: Blog #6

After reading the chapter, “A Brief History of Hackerdom,” from Eric S. Raymond’s The Cathedral and The Bazaar, I find myself more interested in the “folklore” of computers and the internet. I knew some basic facts about the MIT lab and ARPAnet from lower level Information Technology classes I’ve taken, but none gave such an interesting viewpoint of the happenings of the people behind these inventions. Raymond describes the events that lead to today’s internet and personal computer in a way that brings the whole history to life. I can easily relate to the Free Software Foundation hackers and their fight to keep some software from becoming proprietary.

For years now I have heard reference to Unix machines, but never personally worked within that OS. I knew that Linux was based off of Unix simply because of the similar sound in the names and befriending a few hackers in high school. However, not once did I guess that there had been such a prevalent social and political war going on within the hacker community. The idea that there are people who have the wherewithal to break from tradition so completely and try their own way is amazing. It seems the computer, and its many tendrils of succession, have produced the largest organized group of creative, free-thinkers to come along since the Hippie generation. The difference here is that hackers seem to lean toward useful application in their creative, free-thinking rather than merely being creative, free-thinkers. The software programs, operating systems, and free, redistributable source code produced by these minds are consistently useful, more efficient, more stable, and better overall than most commercial parallels.

In the social sphere, it appears that hackers were the pioneers of internet community, a sense of teamwork that was unprecedented, and a desire to share and share alike. Today, I can relate to these ideals primarily through my online gaming experiences as well as chatting. I have become rather close friends with multiple people I never had the opportunity to meet due to their far location. I have experienced teamwork in the form of group fighting in games, but this also manifested itself in one particularly interesting experience. At some point in one of the myriad online games I’ve played, I got to see a “guild” tutoring one of its members in Algebra in the game. This was a regular event since the tutee was having trouble in his Algebra class and apparently a few of the other members were math people. I was blown away by this “teamwork” and sharing of knowledge to help someone fully unknown outside of the game. I know, not the same level of teamwork involved with creating an operating system with multiple people around the world pitching in, but this action being proper within the gaming world stems directly from the hacker sense of community.

In the political sphere, I find it interesting that hackers banded together to help stop two political movements which would have fettered computer users: the Clipper proposal and the "Communications Decency Act." In both instances there was a physical manifestation of the digital hacker community in an effort to keep government from having too much control over computer encryption and the internet. The fact that this sense of community is so strong that it can overrule political and governmental actions is remarkable.

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After rereading my post, I feel I primarily summarized Raymond and gave my personal opinion about the hacker community. To be honest, I'm not sure I know in what way or how to analyze this piece. It is history from the mouth of one who was there (for the most part). I wasn't even alive when a large part of this history was happening. Since we watched the first half of Revolution OS in class I have a little bit of prior knowledge about the subject, but not a lot. It is enough to know that most of the players in this history agree about how the personal computer and the internet developed.

For the most part, I feel as though I should just stare, mouth agape, at this history and glory in the wonder of how it all happened. These days, most people take the internet for granted. My three youngest brothers were born into an already existent internet society where anything that is important is on the internet. I can still remember the first time I accessed the internet on my own personal computer. The sense of freedom that came from such an endless supply of knowledge and communication was exhilirating to say the least. It is imagining not having it that creates wonder in me, because life would be so much more difficult and cumbersome. To have to go back to solely using paper mail, to have to actually speak to someone rather than message them, to be cut-off from the possibility of knowing people in other countries, to have to type papers on a typewriter and look up books with the Dewey Decimal system.... It is a terrifying prospect.

I suppose I didn't really do anything more than add more of my opinion just now. Oh well. Apparently this is what the history of computers inspires in me, so I'm just gonna run with it. ;P

Works Cited:
Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Cambridge: O'Reilly and Associates, 1999.