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Programming Is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic

224 points by Espressosaurus 10y ago

darawk 10y ago
I really enjoyed this essay, even though I think I disagree (at least partially) with its primary conclusion. I especially liked the discussion of the map/territory problem and its application to programming. I think I even agree partially that the most literal version of the hacker ethic is a bit flawed. But I think there is still a lot of value there, even if Levy's book didn't necessarily show it in the best light, or deal equitably with all of his characters. Here i'd say: the map is not the territory. Levy's book is not the hacker ethic, even though he may have made an attempt to map it. The examples he cites may or may not meet the criteria that he himself specified in all cases, but that says more about his choice of example than it does about the ideas themselves. I think there's a way of understanding these principles that comports well with a, shall we say, more mature view of the world than perhaps some of us had growing up on them: > Access to computers should be unlimited and total. I think this one stands on its own. Access should be unlimited and total. For everyone. As the author rightly pointed out, the 'hackers' denied access to Margaret Hamilton. That makes this event a bad example of the hacker ethic, not a good one. But I think the principle fits rather well with the philosophy of the author, provided the definition of 'access' is probably expanded and contextualized. > All information should be free. To me, this is more ideal than implementation. All information ought to be free. In an ideal world. Where possible that information should be free, and we should be working towards a world where it is moreso. However, information should never be more free than the maturity and tolerance of the society its embedded within permits at any given time. As free as possible, but no freer, to put it on a bumper sticker. > Mistrust authority—promote decentralization. I think this is an unequivocal good not limited to the hacker ethic. Authority should be mistrusted. Decentralization should be promoted where we can avoid compromising the other ideals (e.g. access).
- hibikir 10y ago
  Even your modified interpretation has dangerous side effects. We can probably modify the access to computers line to only over computing hardware you own, and that probably works, but the other two lines you comment on are often in opposition. If all information is free, then it's also free to access to authority. Authority can do a lot of things with information that few hackers would like: Read on what full transparency leads to in a place like Bridgewater. Once it's clear that we don't want authority to have free access to our information, it's clear that the 'all information should be free' line is not an idea, it's just hypocritical. What it really means is that hackers should have access to all the information they want, but they should be able to hide all the information they need from authority: Enough of that, and now you have a new authority, which happens to be the people that have access to the information. All information should be free is a phrase that gives permission to developers to creates databases that are better at predicting election results than pollsters. It's what allows people to tell if someone is pregnant, has an undisclosed mental illness, can list everyone's favorite kinks, where has their cellphone been since it was purchased, and everything they've bought on the internet the last 10 years. When it comes to information quantity has a quality all to itself, and I don't think that hackers in the 70s had really internalized this. This breakdown on the hacker ethos builds two camps: One that finds privacy more important, and doesn't really want information to be free, and those that put the freedom of information first, and are happy to hand tremendous guns to authorities, whether they are governments or silicon valley corporations. And this is why the hacker ethics breaks, and we should be careful about the future. There's a lot of uses to all that centralized, free information: A lot of things become very convenient, computers systems are capable of pretty much reading our mind, and fraud detection algorithms become so very good that many things become cheaper. Unfortunately the same tools can be used for far less friendly uses. This is a question we'll all be wrestling with for years, as choosing privacy would make most tech giants collapse, while choosing information freedom is just waiting for the right kind of authority to show us that East Germany's Stasi was just a small scale exercise.
  - darawk 10y ago
    > Even your modified interpretation has dangerous side effects. We can probably modify the access to computers line to only over computing hardware you own, and that probably works, but the other two lines you comment on are often in opposition. I wouldn't even make that modification. Illegally accessing computer hardware in pursuit of a higher or better purpose can be good, provided that purpose avoids harm to others. Of course, people playing God with their own interpretations of when that standard is met can lead to disastrous results. But sometimes it's ok to break something or break into something to learn about it. It's a thin line, but it is there. A Chinese hacker poking holes in the great firewall, for instance. I'd say that's a good thing, even though they do not own the hardware. > f all information is free, then it's also free to access to authority. Authority can do a lot of things with information that few hackers would like: Read on what full transparency leads to in a place like Bridgewater. Once it's clear that we don't want authority to have free access to our information, it's clear that the 'all information should be free' line is not an idea, it's just hypocritical. What it really means is that hackers should have access to all the information they want, but they should be able to hide all the information they need from authority: Enough of that, and now you have a new authority, which happens to be the people that have access to the information. Ya, I couldn't agree more. That's why I added the proviso that information wants to be free only in the ideal case. It is aspirational, not pragmatic. We want to live in a world where all information can be free, and we should all work towards that. That does not, however, mean going around 'liberating' information arbitrarily. And it also does not mean that, in even our most progressive societies, that we are ready for all information to be free. > This breakdown on the hacker ethos builds two camps: One that finds privacy more important, and doesn't really want information to be free, and those that put the freedom of information first, and are happy to hand tremendous guns to authorities, whether they are governments or silicon valley corporations. Ya, you have no argument from me there. I do not think all information should be free in the actual world that we live in. But I do think it's an interesting way of modeling an ideal world. Underneath all forms of necessary secrecy lie blights of some kind. Weapons are secret for war, sexual preferences can be secrets due to shame or even criminalization, etc. Sometimes that secrecy is justified by the faults of the world, and sometimes it is used to further the interests of an individual or group. In the latter case we should strive to reveal it, and in the former to address the justification for that secrecy.
- ktRolster 10y ago
  information should never be more free than the maturity and tolerance of the society its embedded within permits at any given time. I'm not sure what you're talking about here. It sounds like you're justifying censorship, and I'm not sure why.
  - darawk 10y ago
    Some forms of secrecy are good, in certain contexts. A homosexual hiding his or her sexuality in Saudi Arabia, for instance. That is the sort of openness commensurate with the maturity of your society I was referring to. Ideally, no one should have to hide anything about themselves. But we unfortunately aren't quite there yet.
    - jack9 10y ago
      > Some forms of secrecy are good, in certain contexts I disagree. Because my ethic says that secrecy always benefits those of ill-intent. I must not make exceptions for those of goodwill, because exceptions disprove the rule. I am not wary of those of other intent. An ethic doesn't need to be practical. Subscription is not required for it to be virtuous.
      - randallsquared 10y ago
        > because exceptions disprove the rule. You may be aware (since you turned it around), but the phrase "the exception proves the rule" is meant to provoke thought about the rule in question, not announce it as broken. This is so because the meaning of "prove" in that phrase is "test", as noted in https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prove https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prove at 2.a.
        jack9 10y ago
        No offense, but your deflection into another topic of debate (that you seem to care about) has no bearing on my ethics. You completely ignored the point, which was the issue of ethics vs practicality that you seem to misunderstand.
deleted 10y ago
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tikhonj 10y ago
Programming is forgetting because forgetting is abstraction. On the other hand, abstraction is not always about forgetting, and programming is not always about the real world[1]. But that's always been part of the hacker ethic I've seen, to the extent it exists at all. Really, I agreed with a lot of the criticism in the article. There are points definitely worth consideration and reflection. But it also had a couple of peculiarities I've seen again and again in discussions on such topics (whether they're criticisms of programming or some other discipline or science as a whole). It should be considered carefully—dare I say critically? The first problem is that it, by necessity, doesn't treat "the hacker ethic" with the same nuance as its own ideas. That mostly fine—a natural consequence of constrained time and space and effort—but it's a bit concerning if a core part of the argument is that the hacker ethic is insufficiently nuanced. You could say it's a response solely to Levy's book, but its conclusions try to apply to hacker culture as a whole. It's a bit like criticizing science (or scientism) based solely on Neil deGrasse Tyson's hilariously simplistic "Rationalia"[2]. The discussion is still valuable, but not nearly as broad as it tries to look. The other problem is even more classic: the criticism is relevant and natural, but the alternative solution pulled in is arbitrary and does not flow naturally from the criticism. Her suggested alternative questions pull in a lot of baggage unrelated to the shortcomings of the "hacker ethic" that just reflects her particular philosophical abstractions for understanding social systems, power and morality—abstractions that are by no means universal. For example, the focus on "labor" immediately stood out: why single out labor of all things? There is an answer to that question of course, but that's not the point: the point is that the answer to that question does not naturally emerge from the perfectly reasonable criticism in the rest of the talk. The same about most of the other things she wishes to change—or not to change—in the hacker philosophy. As an illustration, it's not hard to imagine somebody with totally different views agreeing fully with the problems outlined in the body of the talk, but coming up with a totally different replacement for the "hacker ethic". Think about a hardcore utilitarian, or somebody with a strongly individualistic bent or a full-on anarchist or whatever else. Or perhaps just imagine the smallest change needed to address the problems of Levy's hacker ethic while keeping the "hacker spirit" however you see it. All those could come up with exactly the same problems in the fist part of the talk, but end up with totally different conclusions. My point, ultimately, is not to address those conclusions in particular. Rather, I just want to point out the disconnect: it's perfectly possible to agree with the setup without admitting anything about the proposed alternatives. Just like it's possible to admit to shortcomings in science without going full-on postmodern about it :). footnotes [1]: I say this coming from a particular perspective where the real world is, if anything, an enemy—perhaps you could call it programming language idealism :). [2]: It's an idealized government based solely on reason and empiricism which is hilariously unrealistic: https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/reflections-on-rationalia/10154399608556613/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/reflectio...
nickthemagicman 10y ago
"And it’s a privilege…if somebody calls you a hacker that’s kind of like a compliment. It’s a privilege to be able to be called a hacker, and it’s reserved for the highest few. And to be honest, I personally could take or leave the term." This feels so passive aggressive and subtly mocking. This entire article is ridiculous pedantry to me. By default everything a HUMAN DOES is a simplification/abstraction of an unknowable mysterious reality. A better catchphrase is: "EXISTENCE IS FORGETTING"....Human language doesn't communicate our complete feelings, ou4 system of time doesn't capture the fullness of the 4th dimension, our structures are a result of our crude ability to shape the infiniteness of matter...and on and on... Then the author claims: "Programs aren’t models of the world constructed from scratch but takes on the world, carefully carved out of reality" Insane! Programs are tools. Is a hammer a 'carefully carved out version of reality? Our societies perceptions give it whatever 'take on reality' it embodies and that is constantly shifting! Our views on Myspace changed pretty fast...the program actually failed because it didn't adapt to societies version of reality. And the authors alternative to the hacker ethic is pretty unusable. It's a pedantic restatement of the golden rule....
- thescribe 10y ago
  This talk is a really poor abstraction of fundamental particles. (Even that could be a lot of abstraction and assumptions)
- PaulAJ 10y ago
  > Is a hammer a 'carefully carved out version of reality? Yes. The construction of a hammer takes a particular view about what is to be done with it. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
- jack9 10y ago
  > This entire article is ridiculous pedantry to me Then you missed the point. Kids grow up reading "real hacker culture" and these ethics are one of the first things I assimilated when incubating. They are not ethics at all, but justifications and she broke it down pat. > Programs are tools. Is a hammer a 'carefully carved out version of reality? There's a similar thread on /. about third party libraries. Programs are universally built on APIs (software or hardware). Yes, they are carved out of their originating context and they break down (as per the PDP-1 story) over time.
zizzles 10y ago
I Cntrl-F'd the article, keyword: "woman" 2 matches. Instantly closed the page.
- nickthemagicman 10y ago
  You're going to get down voted for your comment probably but this article is definitely a type of toxic femininity.
  - madman123 10y ago
    For a good example of this, if you don't want to read the entire thing, try ^F gender.
  - darawk 10y ago
    I too find myself disposed to think poorly of 'these sorts of articles' about gender and women in tech, etc..I think most of what is said about it is pretty silly on all sides. But this article was actually pretty good - it's worth a read, IMHO.
    - nickthemagicman 10y ago
      I absolutely respect women in the tech industry and have been lucky to have extremely knowledgable women as mentors and teachers at various times. But hidden behind flowery language...this article had poor reasoning, a useless metaphor, and was disrespectful to the 'hacker' collective. This author needs to go back to her academics, poetry, and twine games and let competent women working on difficult technology handle the hacker code.
  - PaulAJ 10y ago
    I wonder what you would consider a non-toxic type of femininity?
- developer2 10y ago
  If you're going to do that, you should at least read the context in which the word is used. She doesn't say anything "feminist" whatsoever. If you have nothing nice to say, it's best not to react with a sexist comment like this where one is not due. The fact that your very first instinct upon seeing an article posted by a woman, is to dig in and try to prove that the article must be about feminism, simply because the author is a woman... holy shit. It's people like you that fuel the militaristic kind of feminism we see today. You explicitly seek to lash out against all women, regardless of the situation. Grow up and pull your head out of your ass.
dgreensp 10y ago
This is a great talk, and I loved the discussion and criticism of the roots of hacker culture, and also what the author describes as "logical positivism." You can look at something like Bitcoin as a textbook example. The thinking was that by making a simplified model of money, money can be replaced, and the government (authority) circumvented. In reality, money is not just numbers in a ledger, and when you take away one authority you institute others. That said, mistrusting authorities such as governments is a valid and valuable position, as is standing up for the right to tinker with hardware on principle. Some of the bullet points that are bulldozed in this talk seem to have a philosophical kernel that is sound, if controversial or subversive. It's pretty interesting to me that computer tinkerers in the 70s, before personal computers, couldn't own a computer or take one apart. Is that the lack of "access" the ethic decries? Properly contextualized, is this point just about the inherent value of freedom to tinker? Or is "access should be total" a juvenile rationalization for breaking into computer systems, and "information should be free" an excuse to steal or expose secrets? (And is this ambiguity real or an artifact of Levy's formulation?) I would separate "philosophy" from "culture." If in a particular subculture like hacker culture, "all that matters is how good you are," this is equalizing in a way -- for example, a man and woman with equal skills will have equal status -- but it can also lead to phenomena such as arrogant rockstars and frequent pissing contests. And what about the people who aren't so good, how are they supposed to feel? So this "ethic" can generate a traditionally male sort of culture that is off-putting or toxic to many people, male and female. The fact is that creating a diverse and inclusive community is its own value and doesn't follow from anything about hacking.
- thescribe 10y ago
  > You can look at something like Bitcoin as a textbook example. The thinking was that by making a simplified model of money, money can be replaced, and the government (authority) circumvented. In reality, money is not just numbers in a ledger, and when you take away one authority you institute others. Do we believe that the author of bitcoin has any ability to control Bitcoin other than releasing it or any way to compel adoption of bitcoin beyond advocating for it the way any of us could advocate for it? If they are lacking those abilities they have just provided an alternative which dilutes the authority of traditional money without adding any authority themselves. I may not understand where you are coming from, if so I apologize.
thescribe 10y ago
This is entryism at its finest. It feels like an attempt to subvert an already existing culture to another ideology.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  In order to be entryism, the speaker would have to be an outsider, right? But that's not the case here. It's a member of the community speaking up about the values they care about. Presumably, that care is genuine, right? Or do you have some reason to suspect the speaker is being disingenuous?
  - generic_user 10y ago
    Entryism is the practice of infiltrating an organisation/group to gain trust then using a variety of tactics to try and subvert the politics/ideological premise of the group. Also misdirecting resources to support the subversive ideology and efforts. And ultimately trying to destroy the group and capture the membership into the subversive organisation that was behind the entryism in the first place. What I gather from the piece and the reactions here point to a fairly clear example of entryism.
    - GavinMcG 10y ago
      What evidence do you have of infiltration beyond the fact that you don't like what the speaker said? It's a pretty extraordinary charge that someone would become a computer programmer and become a teacher of programming purely in order to give a conference talk that seems to suggest, at root, that we consider how our programs treat people. What a revolutionary!
      - adangert 10y ago
        The author is trying to replace one system of thought with another, that's a fact. I think it's baseless to assume if the intention of the author was to originally pursue this motive or to suggest improvements after being apart of the community for a period of time.
drewcrawford 10y ago
The audio "loss" example sounds plausible in passing (and the diagram looks plausible) but is actually incorrect. The frequency and timing dimensions of analog audio below the Nyquist frequency is preserved perfectly by digital quantization, which in practice for CD/DVD usecase are the full spectrum of the human ear. This counterintuitive result is explored in some detail in [1]. It is true that the amplitude dimension (only) is quantized to (typically, 16 or 24) bits, which you could detect with a very good oscilloscope. However 24 bits is way smaller than any human ear can discern. Visually, it is like looking at two stacks of dollar bills that are 6,000 feet high and trying to discern which one has one extra bill. I suppose that is technically "lossy", but the only thing we are "forgetting" is something no human could perceive, or remember. [1] https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html
- topspin 10y ago
  > The audio "loss" example sounds plausible in passing Not really. Sure, your debunking is sound, but we really don't need to appeal to Nyquist for this one. Just consider the alternatives; analog media? It begins rotting the moment it's recorded. Some abstract representation? Fine, until you forget how to interpret it. Digitizing is the most robust means we've yet invented to forestall "forgetting;" a technique that enables precise and efficient replication of audio on myriad forms of media now and in the future. The Unicode case is also naive. Every language suffers change as new speakers/writers and new representations appear; that isn't a feature specific to programming or computing at all. On the other hand, thousands of symbols from hundreds of obscure languages are being permanently preserved for posterity in Unicode; how is this "forgetting?"
  - mjg59 10y ago
    The argument is not that "forgetting" is fundamentally bad - it's that the choice of what to leave out can be meaningful. Han unification removes some amount of distinction between things that are meaningfully different and instead relies on additional metadata to reconstruct that. What are the wider social consequences of that? I don't know, but it's not clear that those involved in making the decision do either. The fundamental point here is that hacker culture has often made decisions without considering the effect they have on non-hackers (or even hackers of different backgrounds), and as a result those decisions may result in abstractions that "forget" meaningful data. Uncompressed digitisation of audio is a case where it's unlikely that the difference is important in any way, but there are plenty of examples given where it is. The suggestion that having more information can help us make better decisions shouldn't be controversial.
generic_user 10y ago
Can someone do an executive summary or tl,dr please, I honestly tried to read it but found it impenetrable.
- nickthemagicman 10y ago
  The author is a poet/twine author/programmer at Columbia? She's upset that some guys appeared immature back in the day towards a female programmer, and attempts to deconstruct the hacker manifesto and suggest a replacement that can be summarized as: "Be aware of your actions".... Along the way she posits that because technology can't capture the analog infiniteness of our infinite universe due to it's digital nature that "Technology is forgetting". She uses examples like: loss in converting audio to digital, and compression loss of uneeded information to support this theory....
  - thescribe 10y ago
    I don't think I get deconstruction at a reasonable level. Every time it's brought I feel like I can't follow the argument. Thank you for your summary.
  - generic_user 10y ago
    That is an admirable job, thank you. I may or may not have gained some new insight. But I feel unqualified to decide one way or the other. But I did enjoy the pictures.
- ComodoHacker 10y ago
  Аuthor points out that part of the hacker ethics always was unethical (to many) "the end justifies the means". And she warns the wannabes to think twice before accepting that. Also she reminds that there are always live world and live people behind any computer or mathematical model, and all models are incomplete by definition.
- anonemouse145 10y ago
  The phrase "Toward a new..." is very nearly a sure sign of relativism at work. I don't know why so many quacks pick it. I guess they think they're revolutionizing the world. This article pushes for an ethics and feelings based redistribution of programming effort. That's bad. Because resources remain finite, we won't lose less data, we can only shuffle around what we lose. What we need to make this decision, is not feelings or vague ethical codes. We need hard data, especially in an age of big data and machine learning where the detailed pieces involved in making a deep statistical analysis may well be out of the realm of human comprehension. For example, this article targets the evil gender binary. If only we would think more carefully about our choices. Meanwhile, clinics are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to map rates of ovarian cancer to "demisexuals", or how a local rise in "non-binary asexuals" might affect rates of testicular cancer, and what should be done about funding for screenings. We lose data because we come from an era where space was limited, and cycles were counted. Sure we made some dumb mistakes like 2 digit years, but 2 digit years still work in a broad array of cases so we still use them all over the place today. They are sometimes good to use, sometimes bad, sometimes they're superfluous and unused anyway. By all means rethink what fields should be compressed or expanded based upon business needs. But do it based on data and business use cases, not on feelings and someone's personal bias- even if that person promises their ethics are better than the old ones.
hl5 10y ago
I'd wager that management denying open access to hackers was more detrimental to Ms. Hamilton's exercises than the activities of said hackers. A good hacker would do root cause analysis instead of picking the most convenient victim to further some personal odyssey.
kahrkunne 10y ago
The article does a wonderful job in hiding its actual point, probably because the point is very inane - the semi-serious playful "hacker ethic" must go and be replaced by a moral imperative in the form of a list of questions.
cousin_it 10y ago
I think Levy's take on hacker ethic was a bit phony to begin with, typical of journalists who try to describe the spirit of something without practicing it. All information should be free, really? Like your root password? I much prefer the version in the Jargon File: "A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary." Basically a hacker is someone who enjoys hacking for its own sake, not as part of some moral crusade. The OP is proposing another moral crusade which is just as irrelevant. Whether you like it or not, most discoveries will be made by those who enjoy discovery, not by those who view it as a means to reach utopia.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  >All information should be free, really? Like your root password? No, that sounds right. Didn't you hear about RMS's famous anti-password crusade when passwords were added to ITS? Also, ITS had no root, or even permissions: you could log in as any user and do anything. Except browse the directory where the ZORK sources were kept, after Blank et al. hacked in permissions for that directory (and even then, some DEC engineers patched the system to subvert it and grabbed a copy of the source, translating it to FORTRAN, and giving us DUNGEON. The Zork developers figured that if they went to that much effort, they deserved the source.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - cousin_it 10y ago
    Fair enough. Though even RMS argues today that real names and personal data of online users shouldn't be accessible to everyone.
    - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
      I imagine that's a bit different. The ability to bend the system to your will, make the choices you need to make, and have it behave as you desire, regardless of what the people who were at the keyboard before you think, is empowering, and conducive to hacking. Having all personal data available to anyone in a mass database... not so much.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
Oh boy. I can taste the flames already. Others have aptly tackled the "computing is forgetting" part of the article, so I want to discuss the Midnight Computer Rewiring Society section. The argument is that they denied somone access to a computer by re-wiring it. But that's not true, anymore than changing the ITS login screen to say "5 losers online" was denying anyone access to that routine. The functioning of the computer had been altered, but Hamilton could have simply popped the front panel and re-wired it back, or translated her program to use the other assembler. She wasn't denied access, the hackers just broke something. There is also the claim that Hamilton's access was considered umimportant without even looking at the code, with the implication that it was because she was a woman. As stated above, Hamilton's access was ininhibited. Her program wouldn't run, but not because the hackers didn't consider her important: they had never considered that someone would use DECAL. It wasn't Hamilton's code they disregarded, it was DECAL itself. In this case, wrongly. Frankly, I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s, and secondly, none of them seem to be in any way accurate. And if you're going to claim sexism, at least have the guts to say it straight up. Hacker ethic and culture may be flawed, but it's the only set of computer ethics and culture that I'd want to be a part of.
- webmaven 10y ago
  >I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s It is possible to regard the historical period (and by implication, the social context) of the events as an excuse of the pervasive sexism (but given the vaunted propensity to distrust authority and disregard social conventions, it is quite weak as excuses go), but it certainly does not make the events any less sexist.
  - facepalm 10y ago
    Because only women were ever prevented from working by Hackers? Much as an intellectual achievement Hamilton's code might have been, it wasn't really that relevant to many people (compared to, say, GNU Software or Linux which benefits billions of people). Presumably it therefore simply wasn't the topic of the book Hackers.
  - 10y ago
josteink 10y ago
While it was a interesting read and definitely had several good points, I don't agree this is a "new" hacker ethic. It bears no semblance to the original, and is of a fundamentally different nature. The original is a short and simple declarative list of principles towards a goal. This is a looooong list of ambiguous wishy washy questions whose intent is unclear and with little relation to the original. Trying to brand this as a "new" hacker ethos is just abusing the recognition of the original to push your own (completely different) ideas and agenda. I'm not going to call it entirely disingenuous, but it does come off with a bad smell of politics. Count me out.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  It's a speaker talking about the ethos they'd like to see the hacker community adopt. If you want to call that "pushing an agenda" or "disingenuous" then it would help if you'd clarify what you thought the speaker said they were going to do. They were up front about the fact that they were discussing the values they think are important to adopt – that's exactly what the talk is about! The talk is a direct response to the "old" hacker ethos. Each point addresses the same topic as the original, so there's a pretty strong relation. It's hard to "abuse the recognition of the original" when you're making a point by point response. And, those values and approaches the speaker describes in that response are different from the ones in the original. So in comparison to that old version, this is new. In short, it's completely unclear to me where your criticisms are coming from.
  - josteink 10y ago
    A new version of something existing should show clearly where it came from it. It should represent an iteration. The original represented a celebration of technology and it's possibilities in competent and eager hands, when unconstrained. The new version is all about compromise and politics. It's political first, and only incidentally technological. The original was short and concrete. This spans 20 pages and makes zero concrete principles. The author misrepresents the simplicity of the original Hacker ethos as an absolutism, then moves on to show how absolutism has flaws. Shocking, eh? I could go on, but I think my stance should be fairly obvious by now.
camperman 10y ago
"Levy clearly views this anecdote as an example of the hacker ethic at work. If that’s the case, the hacker ethic in this instance has made it impossible for a brilliant woman to do her work, right. For Levy, the story is passed off as a joke but when I first read it I got angry." Get over yourself. Hacker culture is full of these kinds of pranks, unauthorized hacks and act of disobedience to authority. Margaret Hamilton is worshiped in the hacker world for her brilliance and competence. Nobody cares that she was at the wrong end of a hack 60 years ago when she was a beginner. In fact, it probably enhances her reputation. "So. If the hacker ethic is good, how could it have produced this clearly unfair and horrible and angry-making situation?" Hacker culture has produced practically every piece of software and infrastructure you used to create and post this drivel. You want to re-evaluate it because muh feelingz!! Go back to Tumblr.
- sctb 10y ago
  Please stop violating the guidelines by posting uncivilly like this. It's absolutely possible to say what you have to say without being personally abrasive and insulting, and it's required if you want to keep commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - camperman 10y ago
    When a non-hacker sounds off about how my culture needs to change, my inner Naggum cannot be contained.
facepalm 10y ago
A woman (Hamilton) was unable to work for a couple of hours, therefore hacker ethics suck. On the other hand, millions of people were enabled to work because of hacker ethics. Hamilton is of course the most important programmer of all time. Not only is she female, but her work will one day be considered as a turning point in the evolution of mankind. It is the foundation for exploration of the stars, which will secure the survival of the human species. To overlook her work and instead praise pathetic hackers being a nuisance to other people is obviously sexist, like the whole tech industry.
leoc 10y ago
Start bracing youselves now for the Eric Raymond counterblast.
- josteink 10y ago
  I'm not so sure, but if he decides to write one, I'm looking forward to it. Eric usually makes for an interesting read.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    Eric can be good, especially when his writing is purely technical. However, his politics are off-the-wall insane, so his response to this might be similarly so.
- GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
  Who cares what ESR has to say about anything?
eugeneionesco 10y ago
Yet another new "ethic" that just pushes identity politics into tech, just ignore it.
auggierose 10y ago
I like the article. Replace "forgetting" by "abstracting" and it becomes even more reasonable.
stirner 10y ago
I think Parrish misunderstands a key component of the hacker ethic, which is that the "richness of the world" is overrated and the structured logic of computer systems is something we should strive for.
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  "overrated" is kind of a garbage descriptor. All I have to do to make something overrated is rate it highly. I suspect you have more concrete descriptors for what you are complaining about, I would be more interested in reading those.
  - stirner 10y ago
    Okay.
saycheese 10y ago
>> "if somebody calls you a hacker that’s kind of like a compliment" Being called a hacker has never felt like a compliment to me.
- saint_fiasco 10y ago
  You frequent a site called Hacker News so at least you don't see hacker as a terrible insult.
  - saycheese 10y ago
    Actually, I really dislike the site's name and I would never infer that because someone visits a site that some label applies to them.
    - pvdebbe 10y ago
      This site is just misnamed, is all. "Startup news" would be more apt.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  ...What community do you frequent?
javajosh 10y ago
I found it interesting that her big counter-example to Levy's hacker ethic concerned the modification of hardware. And shared hardware at that. There is a difference of kind rather than degree when it comes to modifying software because software never needs to be shared. That is, you can copy data, modify it to your heart's content, and never affect the original owner of the data. This does bring up a bunch of interesting points about shared software and data, like who owns it. But one can imagine a world where all software is open, which means anyone is trivially able to hang a shingle and start a new node, but the only really "owned" stuff is the data users have put into it.
igniteflow 10y ago
If you buy into personality types, the hacker philosophy in part comes from the fact many "hackers" are of ISTP type or similar. These personality types learn by taking things apart and are far more likely to simply ignore rules if they can see a way to solve a problem. As tech expands and becomes comprised of a broader range of people with different takes on how things should be done, then there is room for conflict and it's valid to question how we will overcome this. However, replacing statements with questions feels like a philosophy class. If the author has an effective counter argument then they should be able to define it clearly and succinctly.
- GavinMcG 10y ago
  Is "you should be asking these questions instead of making those assumptions" such an unclear argument? The questions are the whole point – that's what the speaker wants us to keep in mind as we make choices as professionals.
adangert 10y ago
I would suggest that computers don't necessarily make your life better, but following value does, and using computers in certain ways necessary follows added value.
chmaynard 10y ago
Stewart Nelson decided to rewire MIT’s PDP-1 as a prank. Later, Margaret Hamilton tried to use the DEC-supplied DECAL assembler on the machine and it crashed repeatedly. The transcript points out that Hamilton is generally credited with doing brilliant work for NASA on the Apollo project. Did Nelson go on to do anything notable? Just curious.
- chmaynard 10y ago
  If the length of one's Wikipedia page is any indication, Hamilton kicked a bigger dent in the Universe than Nelson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Nelson_(hacker) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)

224 points by Espressosaurus 10y ago

I really enjoyed this essay, even though I think I disagree (at least partially) with its primary conclusion. I especially liked the discussion of the map/territory problem and its application to programming. I think I even agree partially that the most literal version of the hacker ethic is a bit flawed. But I think there is still a lot of value there, even if Levy's book didn't necessarily show it in the best light, or deal equitably with all of his characters. Here i'd say: the map is not the territory. Levy's book is not the hacker ethic, even though he may have made an attempt to map it. The examples he cites may or may not meet the criteria that he himself specified in all cases, but that says more about his choice of example than it does about the ideas themselves. I think there's a way of understanding these principles that comports well with a, shall we say, more mature view of the world than perhaps some of us had growing up on them: > Access to computers should be unlimited and total. I think this one stands on its own. Access should be unlimited and total. For everyone. As the author rightly pointed out, the 'hackers' denied access to Margaret Hamilton. That makes this event a bad example of the hacker ethic, not a good one. But I think the principle fits rather well with the philosophy of the author, provided the definition of 'access' is probably expanded and contextualized. > All information should be free. To me, this is more ideal than implementation. All information ought to be free. In an ideal world. Where possible that information should be free, and we should be working towards a world where it is moreso. However, information should never be more free than the maturity and tolerance of the society its embedded within permits at any given time. As free as possible, but no freer, to put it on a bumper sticker. > Mistrust authority—promote decentralization. I think this is an unequivocal good not limited to the hacker ethic. Authority should be mistrusted. Decentralization should be promoted where we can avoid compromising the other ideals (e.g. access).

hibikir 10y ago
Even your modified interpretation has dangerous side effects. We can probably modify the access to computers line to only over computing hardware you own, and that probably works, but the other two lines you comment on are often in opposition. If all information is free, then it's also free to access to authority. Authority can do a lot of things with information that few hackers would like: Read on what full transparency leads to in a place like Bridgewater. Once it's clear that we don't want authority to have free access to our information, it's clear that the 'all information should be free' line is not an idea, it's just hypocritical. What it really means is that hackers should have access to all the information they want, but they should be able to hide all the information they need from authority: Enough of that, and now you have a new authority, which happens to be the people that have access to the information. All information should be free is a phrase that gives permission to developers to creates databases that are better at predicting election results than pollsters. It's what allows people to tell if someone is pregnant, has an undisclosed mental illness, can list everyone's favorite kinks, where has their cellphone been since it was purchased, and everything they've bought on the internet the last 10 years. When it comes to information quantity has a quality all to itself, and I don't think that hackers in the 70s had really internalized this. This breakdown on the hacker ethos builds two camps: One that finds privacy more important, and doesn't really want information to be free, and those that put the freedom of information first, and are happy to hand tremendous guns to authorities, whether they are governments or silicon valley corporations. And this is why the hacker ethics breaks, and we should be careful about the future. There's a lot of uses to all that centralized, free information: A lot of things become very convenient, computers systems are capable of pretty much reading our mind, and fraud detection algorithms become so very good that many things become cheaper. Unfortunately the same tools can be used for far less friendly uses. This is a question we'll all be wrestling with for years, as choosing privacy would make most tech giants collapse, while choosing information freedom is just waiting for the right kind of authority to show us that East Germany's Stasi was just a small scale exercise.
- darawk 10y ago
  > Even your modified interpretation has dangerous side effects. We can probably modify the access to computers line to only over computing hardware you own, and that probably works, but the other two lines you comment on are often in opposition. I wouldn't even make that modification. Illegally accessing computer hardware in pursuit of a higher or better purpose can be good, provided that purpose avoids harm to others. Of course, people playing God with their own interpretations of when that standard is met can lead to disastrous results. But sometimes it's ok to break something or break into something to learn about it. It's a thin line, but it is there. A Chinese hacker poking holes in the great firewall, for instance. I'd say that's a good thing, even though they do not own the hardware. > f all information is free, then it's also free to access to authority. Authority can do a lot of things with information that few hackers would like: Read on what full transparency leads to in a place like Bridgewater. Once it's clear that we don't want authority to have free access to our information, it's clear that the 'all information should be free' line is not an idea, it's just hypocritical. What it really means is that hackers should have access to all the information they want, but they should be able to hide all the information they need from authority: Enough of that, and now you have a new authority, which happens to be the people that have access to the information. Ya, I couldn't agree more. That's why I added the proviso that information wants to be free only in the ideal case. It is aspirational, not pragmatic. We want to live in a world where all information can be free, and we should all work towards that. That does not, however, mean going around 'liberating' information arbitrarily. And it also does not mean that, in even our most progressive societies, that we are ready for all information to be free. > This breakdown on the hacker ethos builds two camps: One that finds privacy more important, and doesn't really want information to be free, and those that put the freedom of information first, and are happy to hand tremendous guns to authorities, whether they are governments or silicon valley corporations. Ya, you have no argument from me there. I do not think all information should be free in the actual world that we live in. But I do think it's an interesting way of modeling an ideal world. Underneath all forms of necessary secrecy lie blights of some kind. Weapons are secret for war, sexual preferences can be secrets due to shame or even criminalization, etc. Sometimes that secrecy is justified by the faults of the world, and sometimes it is used to further the interests of an individual or group. In the latter case we should strive to reveal it, and in the former to address the justification for that secrecy.
ktRolster 10y ago
information should never be more free than the maturity and tolerance of the society its embedded within permits at any given time. I'm not sure what you're talking about here. It sounds like you're justifying censorship, and I'm not sure why.
- darawk 10y ago
  Some forms of secrecy are good, in certain contexts. A homosexual hiding his or her sexuality in Saudi Arabia, for instance. That is the sort of openness commensurate with the maturity of your society I was referring to. Ideally, no one should have to hide anything about themselves. But we unfortunately aren't quite there yet.
  - jack9 10y ago
    > Some forms of secrecy are good, in certain contexts I disagree. Because my ethic says that secrecy always benefits those of ill-intent. I must not make exceptions for those of goodwill, because exceptions disprove the rule. I am not wary of those of other intent. An ethic doesn't need to be practical. Subscription is not required for it to be virtuous.
    - randallsquared 10y ago
      > because exceptions disprove the rule. You may be aware (since you turned it around), but the phrase "the exception proves the rule" is meant to provoke thought about the rule in question, not announce it as broken. This is so because the meaning of "prove" in that phrase is "test", as noted in https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prove https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prove at 2.a.
      - jack9 10y ago
        No offense, but your deflection into another topic of debate (that you seem to care about) has no bearing on my ethics. You completely ignored the point, which was the issue of ethics vs practicality that you seem to misunderstand.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

tikhonj 10y ago

Programming is forgetting because forgetting is abstraction. On the other hand, abstraction is not always about forgetting, and programming is not always about the real world[1]. But that's always been part of the hacker ethic I've seen, to the extent it exists at all. Really, I agreed with a lot of the criticism in the article. There are points definitely worth consideration and reflection. But it also had a couple of peculiarities I've seen again and again in discussions on such topics (whether they're criticisms of programming or some other discipline or science as a whole). It should be considered carefully—dare I say critically? The first problem is that it, by necessity, doesn't treat "the hacker ethic" with the same nuance as its own ideas. That mostly fine—a natural consequence of constrained time and space and effort—but it's a bit concerning if a core part of the argument is that the hacker ethic is insufficiently nuanced. You could say it's a response solely to Levy's book, but its conclusions try to apply to hacker culture as a whole. It's a bit like criticizing science (or scientism) based solely on Neil deGrasse Tyson's hilariously simplistic "Rationalia"[2]. The discussion is still valuable, but not nearly as broad as it tries to look. The other problem is even more classic: the criticism is relevant and natural, but the alternative solution pulled in is arbitrary and does not flow naturally from the criticism. Her suggested alternative questions pull in a lot of baggage unrelated to the shortcomings of the "hacker ethic" that just reflects her particular philosophical abstractions for understanding social systems, power and morality—abstractions that are by no means universal. For example, the focus on "labor" immediately stood out: why single out labor of all things? There is an answer to that question of course, but that's not the point: the point is that the answer to that question does not naturally emerge from the perfectly reasonable criticism in the rest of the talk. The same about most of the other things she wishes to change—or not to change—in the hacker philosophy. As an illustration, it's not hard to imagine somebody with totally different views agreeing fully with the problems outlined in the body of the talk, but coming up with a totally different replacement for the "hacker ethic". Think about a hardcore utilitarian, or somebody with a strongly individualistic bent or a full-on anarchist or whatever else. Or perhaps just imagine the smallest change needed to address the problems of Levy's hacker ethic while keeping the "hacker spirit" however you see it. All those could come up with exactly the same problems in the fist part of the talk, but end up with totally different conclusions. My point, ultimately, is not to address those conclusions in particular. Rather, I just want to point out the disconnect: it's perfectly possible to agree with the setup without admitting anything about the proposed alternatives. Just like it's possible to admit to shortcomings in science without going full-on postmodern about it :). footnotes [1]: I say this coming from a particular perspective where the real world is, if anything, an enemy—perhaps you could call it programming language idealism :). [2]: It's an idealized government based solely on reason and empiricism which is hilariously unrealistic: https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/reflections-on-rationalia/10154399608556613/ https://www.facebook.com/notes/neil-degrasse-tyson/reflectio...

nickthemagicman 10y ago

"And it’s a privilege…if somebody calls you a hacker that’s kind of like a compliment. It’s a privilege to be able to be called a hacker, and it’s reserved for the highest few. And to be honest, I personally could take or leave the term." This feels so passive aggressive and subtly mocking. This entire article is ridiculous pedantry to me. By default everything a HUMAN DOES is a simplification/abstraction of an unknowable mysterious reality. A better catchphrase is: "EXISTENCE IS FORGETTING"....Human language doesn't communicate our complete feelings, ou4 system of time doesn't capture the fullness of the 4th dimension, our structures are a result of our crude ability to shape the infiniteness of matter...and on and on... Then the author claims: "Programs aren’t models of the world constructed from scratch but takes on the world, carefully carved out of reality" Insane! Programs are tools. Is a hammer a 'carefully carved out version of reality? Our societies perceptions give it whatever 'take on reality' it embodies and that is constantly shifting! Our views on Myspace changed pretty fast...the program actually failed because it didn't adapt to societies version of reality. And the authors alternative to the hacker ethic is pretty unusable. It's a pedantic restatement of the golden rule....

thescribe 10y ago
This talk is a really poor abstraction of fundamental particles. (Even that could be a lot of abstraction and assumptions)
PaulAJ 10y ago
> Is a hammer a 'carefully carved out version of reality? Yes. The construction of a hammer takes a particular view about what is to be done with it. When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
jack9 10y ago
> This entire article is ridiculous pedantry to me Then you missed the point. Kids grow up reading "real hacker culture" and these ethics are one of the first things I assimilated when incubating. They are not ethics at all, but justifications and she broke it down pat. > Programs are tools. Is a hammer a 'carefully carved out version of reality? There's a similar thread on /. about third party libraries. Programs are universally built on APIs (software or hardware). Yes, they are carved out of their originating context and they break down (as per the PDP-1 story) over time.

zizzles 10y ago

I Cntrl-F'd the article, keyword: "woman" 2 matches. Instantly closed the page.

nickthemagicman 10y ago
You're going to get down voted for your comment probably but this article is definitely a type of toxic femininity.
- madman123 10y ago
  For a good example of this, if you don't want to read the entire thing, try ^F gender.
- darawk 10y ago
  I too find myself disposed to think poorly of 'these sorts of articles' about gender and women in tech, etc..I think most of what is said about it is pretty silly on all sides. But this article was actually pretty good - it's worth a read, IMHO.
  - nickthemagicman 10y ago
    I absolutely respect women in the tech industry and have been lucky to have extremely knowledgable women as mentors and teachers at various times. But hidden behind flowery language...this article had poor reasoning, a useless metaphor, and was disrespectful to the 'hacker' collective. This author needs to go back to her academics, poetry, and twine games and let competent women working on difficult technology handle the hacker code.
- PaulAJ 10y ago
  I wonder what you would consider a non-toxic type of femininity?
developer2 10y ago
If you're going to do that, you should at least read the context in which the word is used. She doesn't say anything "feminist" whatsoever. If you have nothing nice to say, it's best not to react with a sexist comment like this where one is not due. The fact that your very first instinct upon seeing an article posted by a woman, is to dig in and try to prove that the article must be about feminism, simply because the author is a woman... holy shit. It's people like you that fuel the militaristic kind of feminism we see today. You explicitly seek to lash out against all women, regardless of the situation. Grow up and pull your head out of your ass.

dgreensp 10y ago

This is a great talk, and I loved the discussion and criticism of the roots of hacker culture, and also what the author describes as "logical positivism." You can look at something like Bitcoin as a textbook example. The thinking was that by making a simplified model of money, money can be replaced, and the government (authority) circumvented. In reality, money is not just numbers in a ledger, and when you take away one authority you institute others. That said, mistrusting authorities such as governments is a valid and valuable position, as is standing up for the right to tinker with hardware on principle. Some of the bullet points that are bulldozed in this talk seem to have a philosophical kernel that is sound, if controversial or subversive. It's pretty interesting to me that computer tinkerers in the 70s, before personal computers, couldn't own a computer or take one apart. Is that the lack of "access" the ethic decries? Properly contextualized, is this point just about the inherent value of freedom to tinker? Or is "access should be total" a juvenile rationalization for breaking into computer systems, and "information should be free" an excuse to steal or expose secrets? (And is this ambiguity real or an artifact of Levy's formulation?) I would separate "philosophy" from "culture." If in a particular subculture like hacker culture, "all that matters is how good you are," this is equalizing in a way -- for example, a man and woman with equal skills will have equal status -- but it can also lead to phenomena such as arrogant rockstars and frequent pissing contests. And what about the people who aren't so good, how are they supposed to feel? So this "ethic" can generate a traditionally male sort of culture that is off-putting or toxic to many people, male and female. The fact is that creating a diverse and inclusive community is its own value and doesn't follow from anything about hacking.

thescribe 10y ago
> You can look at something like Bitcoin as a textbook example. The thinking was that by making a simplified model of money, money can be replaced, and the government (authority) circumvented. In reality, money is not just numbers in a ledger, and when you take away one authority you institute others. Do we believe that the author of bitcoin has any ability to control Bitcoin other than releasing it or any way to compel adoption of bitcoin beyond advocating for it the way any of us could advocate for it? If they are lacking those abilities they have just provided an alternative which dilutes the authority of traditional money without adding any authority themselves. I may not understand where you are coming from, if so I apologize.

thescribe 10y ago

This is entryism at its finest. It feels like an attempt to subvert an already existing culture to another ideology.

GavinMcG 10y ago
In order to be entryism, the speaker would have to be an outsider, right? But that's not the case here. It's a member of the community speaking up about the values they care about. Presumably, that care is genuine, right? Or do you have some reason to suspect the speaker is being disingenuous?
- generic_user 10y ago
  Entryism is the practice of infiltrating an organisation/group to gain trust then using a variety of tactics to try and subvert the politics/ideological premise of the group. Also misdirecting resources to support the subversive ideology and efforts. And ultimately trying to destroy the group and capture the membership into the subversive organisation that was behind the entryism in the first place. What I gather from the piece and the reactions here point to a fairly clear example of entryism.
  - GavinMcG 10y ago
    What evidence do you have of infiltration beyond the fact that you don't like what the speaker said? It's a pretty extraordinary charge that someone would become a computer programmer and become a teacher of programming purely in order to give a conference talk that seems to suggest, at root, that we consider how our programs treat people. What a revolutionary!
    - adangert 10y ago
      The author is trying to replace one system of thought with another, that's a fact. I think it's baseless to assume if the intention of the author was to originally pursue this motive or to suggest improvements after being apart of the community for a period of time.

drewcrawford 10y ago

The audio "loss" example sounds plausible in passing (and the diagram looks plausible) but is actually incorrect. The frequency and timing dimensions of analog audio below the Nyquist frequency is preserved perfectly by digital quantization, which in practice for CD/DVD usecase are the full spectrum of the human ear. This counterintuitive result is explored in some detail in [1]. It is true that the amplitude dimension (only) is quantized to (typically, 16 or 24) bits, which you could detect with a very good oscilloscope. However 24 bits is way smaller than any human ear can discern. Visually, it is like looking at two stacks of dollar bills that are 6,000 feet high and trying to discern which one has one extra bill. I suppose that is technically "lossy", but the only thing we are "forgetting" is something no human could perceive, or remember. [1] https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html https://people.xiph.org/~xiphmont/demo/neil-young.html

topspin 10y ago
> The audio "loss" example sounds plausible in passing Not really. Sure, your debunking is sound, but we really don't need to appeal to Nyquist for this one. Just consider the alternatives; analog media? It begins rotting the moment it's recorded. Some abstract representation? Fine, until you forget how to interpret it. Digitizing is the most robust means we've yet invented to forestall "forgetting;" a technique that enables precise and efficient replication of audio on myriad forms of media now and in the future. The Unicode case is also naive. Every language suffers change as new speakers/writers and new representations appear; that isn't a feature specific to programming or computing at all. On the other hand, thousands of symbols from hundreds of obscure languages are being permanently preserved for posterity in Unicode; how is this "forgetting?"
- mjg59 10y ago
  The argument is not that "forgetting" is fundamentally bad - it's that the choice of what to leave out can be meaningful. Han unification removes some amount of distinction between things that are meaningfully different and instead relies on additional metadata to reconstruct that. What are the wider social consequences of that? I don't know, but it's not clear that those involved in making the decision do either. The fundamental point here is that hacker culture has often made decisions without considering the effect they have on non-hackers (or even hackers of different backgrounds), and as a result those decisions may result in abstractions that "forget" meaningful data. Uncompressed digitisation of audio is a case where it's unlikely that the difference is important in any way, but there are plenty of examples given where it is. The suggestion that having more information can help us make better decisions shouldn't be controversial.

generic_user 10y ago

Can someone do an executive summary or tl,dr please, I honestly tried to read it but found it impenetrable.

nickthemagicman 10y ago
The author is a poet/twine author/programmer at Columbia? She's upset that some guys appeared immature back in the day towards a female programmer, and attempts to deconstruct the hacker manifesto and suggest a replacement that can be summarized as: "Be aware of your actions".... Along the way she posits that because technology can't capture the analog infiniteness of our infinite universe due to it's digital nature that "Technology is forgetting". She uses examples like: loss in converting audio to digital, and compression loss of uneeded information to support this theory....
- thescribe 10y ago
  I don't think I get deconstruction at a reasonable level. Every time it's brought I feel like I can't follow the argument. Thank you for your summary.
- generic_user 10y ago
  That is an admirable job, thank you. I may or may not have gained some new insight. But I feel unqualified to decide one way or the other. But I did enjoy the pictures.
ComodoHacker 10y ago
Аuthor points out that part of the hacker ethics always was unethical (to many) "the end justifies the means". And she warns the wannabes to think twice before accepting that. Also she reminds that there are always live world and live people behind any computer or mathematical model, and all models are incomplete by definition.
anonemouse145 10y ago
The phrase "Toward a new..." is very nearly a sure sign of relativism at work. I don't know why so many quacks pick it. I guess they think they're revolutionizing the world. This article pushes for an ethics and feelings based redistribution of programming effort. That's bad. Because resources remain finite, we won't lose less data, we can only shuffle around what we lose. What we need to make this decision, is not feelings or vague ethical codes. We need hard data, especially in an age of big data and machine learning where the detailed pieces involved in making a deep statistical analysis may well be out of the realm of human comprehension. For example, this article targets the evil gender binary. If only we would think more carefully about our choices. Meanwhile, clinics are scratching their heads trying to figure out how to map rates of ovarian cancer to "demisexuals", or how a local rise in "non-binary asexuals" might affect rates of testicular cancer, and what should be done about funding for screenings. We lose data because we come from an era where space was limited, and cycles were counted. Sure we made some dumb mistakes like 2 digit years, but 2 digit years still work in a broad array of cases so we still use them all over the place today. They are sometimes good to use, sometimes bad, sometimes they're superfluous and unused anyway. By all means rethink what fields should be compressed or expanded based upon business needs. But do it based on data and business use cases, not on feelings and someone's personal bias- even if that person promises their ethics are better than the old ones.

hl5 10y ago

I'd wager that management denying open access to hackers was more detrimental to Ms. Hamilton's exercises than the activities of said hackers. A good hacker would do root cause analysis instead of picking the most convenient victim to further some personal odyssey.

kahrkunne 10y ago

The article does a wonderful job in hiding its actual point, probably because the point is very inane - the semi-serious playful "hacker ethic" must go and be replaced by a moral imperative in the form of a list of questions.

cousin_it 10y ago

I think Levy's take on hacker ethic was a bit phony to begin with, typical of journalists who try to describe the spirit of something without practicing it. All information should be free, really? Like your root password? I much prefer the version in the Jargon File: "A person who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities, as opposed to most users, who prefer to learn only the minimum necessary." Basically a hacker is someone who enjoys hacking for its own sake, not as part of some moral crusade. The OP is proposing another moral crusade which is just as irrelevant. Whether you like it or not, most discoveries will be made by those who enjoy discovery, not by those who view it as a means to reach utopia.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago
>All information should be free, really? Like your root password? No, that sounds right. Didn't you hear about RMS's famous anti-password crusade when passwords were added to ITS? Also, ITS had no root, or even permissions: you could log in as any user and do anything. Except browse the directory where the ZORK sources were kept, after Blank et al. hacked in permissions for that directory (and even then, some DEC engineers patched the system to subvert it and grabbed a copy of the source, translating it to FORTRAN, and giving us DUNGEON. The Zork developers figured that if they went to that much effort, they deserved the source.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
- cousin_it 10y ago
  Fair enough. Though even RMS argues today that real names and personal data of online users shouldn't be accessible to everyone.
  - qwertyuiop924 10y ago
    I imagine that's a bit different. The ability to bend the system to your will, make the choices you need to make, and have it behave as you desire, regardless of what the people who were at the keyboard before you think, is empowering, and conducive to hacking. Having all personal data available to anyone in a mass database... not so much.

qwertyuiop924 10y ago

Oh boy. I can taste the flames already. Others have aptly tackled the "computing is forgetting" part of the article, so I want to discuss the Midnight Computer Rewiring Society section. The argument is that they denied somone access to a computer by re-wiring it. But that's not true, anymore than changing the ITS login screen to say "5 losers online" was denying anyone access to that routine. The functioning of the computer had been altered, but Hamilton could have simply popped the front panel and re-wired it back, or translated her program to use the other assembler. She wasn't denied access, the hackers just broke something. There is also the claim that Hamilton's access was considered umimportant without even looking at the code, with the implication that it was because she was a woman. As stated above, Hamilton's access was ininhibited. Her program wouldn't run, but not because the hackers didn't consider her important: they had never considered that someone would use DECAL. It wasn't Hamilton's code they disregarded, it was DECAL itself. In this case, wrongly. Frankly, I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s, and secondly, none of them seem to be in any way accurate. And if you're going to claim sexism, at least have the guts to say it straight up. Hacker ethic and culture may be flawed, but it's the only set of computer ethics and culture that I'd want to be a part of.

webmaven 10y ago
>I find the continuing undertones of sexism accusations frustrating: firstly, it was the 50s It is possible to regard the historical period (and by implication, the social context) of the events as an excuse of the pervasive sexism (but given the vaunted propensity to distrust authority and disregard social conventions, it is quite weak as excuses go), but it certainly does not make the events any less sexist.
- facepalm 10y ago
  Because only women were ever prevented from working by Hackers? Much as an intellectual achievement Hamilton's code might have been, it wasn't really that relevant to many people (compared to, say, GNU Software or Linux which benefits billions of people). Presumably it therefore simply wasn't the topic of the book Hackers.
- 10y ago

josteink 10y ago

While it was a interesting read and definitely had several good points, I don't agree this is a "new" hacker ethic. It bears no semblance to the original, and is of a fundamentally different nature. The original is a short and simple declarative list of principles towards a goal. This is a looooong list of ambiguous wishy washy questions whose intent is unclear and with little relation to the original. Trying to brand this as a "new" hacker ethos is just abusing the recognition of the original to push your own (completely different) ideas and agenda. I'm not going to call it entirely disingenuous, but it does come off with a bad smell of politics. Count me out.

GavinMcG 10y ago
It's a speaker talking about the ethos they'd like to see the hacker community adopt. If you want to call that "pushing an agenda" or "disingenuous" then it would help if you'd clarify what you thought the speaker said they were going to do. They were up front about the fact that they were discussing the values they think are important to adopt – that's exactly what the talk is about! The talk is a direct response to the "old" hacker ethos. Each point addresses the same topic as the original, so there's a pretty strong relation. It's hard to "abuse the recognition of the original" when you're making a point by point response. And, those values and approaches the speaker describes in that response are different from the ones in the original. So in comparison to that old version, this is new. In short, it's completely unclear to me where your criticisms are coming from.
- josteink 10y ago
  A new version of something existing should show clearly where it came from it. It should represent an iteration. The original represented a celebration of technology and it's possibilities in competent and eager hands, when unconstrained. The new version is all about compromise and politics. It's political first, and only incidentally technological. The original was short and concrete. This spans 20 pages and makes zero concrete principles. The author misrepresents the simplicity of the original Hacker ethos as an absolutism, then moves on to show how absolutism has flaws. Shocking, eh? I could go on, but I think my stance should be fairly obvious by now.

camperman 10y ago

"Levy clearly views this anecdote as an example of the hacker ethic at work. If that’s the case, the hacker ethic in this instance has made it impossible for a brilliant woman to do her work, right. For Levy, the story is passed off as a joke but when I first read it I got angry." Get over yourself. Hacker culture is full of these kinds of pranks, unauthorized hacks and act of disobedience to authority. Margaret Hamilton is worshiped in the hacker world for her brilliance and competence. Nobody cares that she was at the wrong end of a hack 60 years ago when she was a beginner. In fact, it probably enhances her reputation. "So. If the hacker ethic is good, how could it have produced this clearly unfair and horrible and angry-making situation?" Hacker culture has produced practically every piece of software and infrastructure you used to create and post this drivel. You want to re-evaluate it because muh feelingz!! Go back to Tumblr.

sctb 10y ago
Please stop violating the guidelines by posting uncivilly like this. It's absolutely possible to say what you have to say without being personally abrasive and insulting, and it's required if you want to keep commenting here. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- camperman 10y ago
  When a non-hacker sounds off about how my culture needs to change, my inner Naggum cannot be contained.

facepalm 10y ago

A woman (Hamilton) was unable to work for a couple of hours, therefore hacker ethics suck. On the other hand, millions of people were enabled to work because of hacker ethics. Hamilton is of course the most important programmer of all time. Not only is she female, but her work will one day be considered as a turning point in the evolution of mankind. It is the foundation for exploration of the stars, which will secure the survival of the human species. To overlook her work and instead praise pathetic hackers being a nuisance to other people is obviously sexist, like the whole tech industry.

leoc 10y ago

Start bracing youselves now for the Eric Raymond counterblast.

josteink 10y ago
I'm not so sure, but if he decides to write one, I'm looking forward to it. Eric usually makes for an interesting read.
- qwertyuiop924 10y ago
  Eric can be good, especially when his writing is purely technical. However, his politics are off-the-wall insane, so his response to this might be similarly so.
GFK_of_xmaspast 10y ago
Who cares what ESR has to say about anything?

eugeneionesco 10y ago

Yet another new "ethic" that just pushes identity politics into tech, just ignore it.

auggierose 10y ago

I like the article. Replace "forgetting" by "abstracting" and it becomes even more reasonable.

stirner 10y ago

I think Parrish misunderstands a key component of the hacker ethic, which is that the "richness of the world" is overrated and the structured logic of computer systems is something we should strive for.

erikpukinskis 10y ago
"overrated" is kind of a garbage descriptor. All I have to do to make something overrated is rate it highly. I suspect you have more concrete descriptors for what you are complaining about, I would be more interested in reading those.
- stirner 10y ago
  Okay.

saycheese 10y ago

>> "if somebody calls you a hacker that’s kind of like a compliment" Being called a hacker has never felt like a compliment to me.

saint_fiasco 10y ago
You frequent a site called Hacker News so at least you don't see hacker as a terrible insult.
- saycheese 10y ago
  Actually, I really dislike the site's name and I would never infer that because someone visits a site that some label applies to them.
  - pvdebbe 10y ago
    This site is just misnamed, is all. "Startup news" would be more apt.
qwertyuiop924 10y ago
...What community do you frequent?

javajosh 10y ago

I found it interesting that her big counter-example to Levy's hacker ethic concerned the modification of hardware. And shared hardware at that. There is a difference of kind rather than degree when it comes to modifying software because software never needs to be shared. That is, you can copy data, modify it to your heart's content, and never affect the original owner of the data. This does bring up a bunch of interesting points about shared software and data, like who owns it. But one can imagine a world where all software is open, which means anyone is trivially able to hang a shingle and start a new node, but the only really "owned" stuff is the data users have put into it.

igniteflow 10y ago

If you buy into personality types, the hacker philosophy in part comes from the fact many "hackers" are of ISTP type or similar. These personality types learn by taking things apart and are far more likely to simply ignore rules if they can see a way to solve a problem. As tech expands and becomes comprised of a broader range of people with different takes on how things should be done, then there is room for conflict and it's valid to question how we will overcome this. However, replacing statements with questions feels like a philosophy class. If the author has an effective counter argument then they should be able to define it clearly and succinctly.

GavinMcG 10y ago
Is "you should be asking these questions instead of making those assumptions" such an unclear argument? The questions are the whole point – that's what the speaker wants us to keep in mind as we make choices as professionals.

adangert 10y ago

I would suggest that computers don't necessarily make your life better, but following value does, and using computers in certain ways necessary follows added value.

chmaynard 10y ago

Stewart Nelson decided to rewire MIT’s PDP-1 as a prank. Later, Margaret Hamilton tried to use the DEC-supplied DECAL assembler on the machine and it crashed repeatedly. The transcript points out that Hamilton is generally credited with doing brilliant work for NASA on the Apollo project. Did Nelson go on to do anything notable? Just curious.

chmaynard 10y ago
If the length of one's Wikipedia page is any indication, Hamilton kicked a bigger dent in the Universe than Nelson. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stewart_Nelson_(hacker) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Hamilton_(scientist)