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I appreciate the compliment. I kinda knew it would not be read by many because of its length - so I didn't even bother to submit it to hacker news. But I was

I appreciate the compliment. I kinda knew it would not be read by many because of its length - so I didn't even bother to submit it to hacker news. But I was pleasantly surprised today to see it on the front page. I have been thinking about breaking it up into smaller articles - but something in me has resisted. The most important point requires the reader to stitch together a great number of different threads - and would be largely intelligible without the background. I tried to explain the idea over at esr's blog - because I thought the crowd there might be interested and might get it. Amusingly esr let loose at me (called me a sloppy thinker no less!) - and I realised it just couldn't be articulated in small bytes of info. But yeah - intimacy comes at a great cost of time - the time spent really getting to know a person through great chats and extended exploration. This article assumes intimacy with the world because of the time required to invest in it. But if just a few people like yourself get a chance to look at it - and maybe even refine some of the ideas (which they certainly need) - then that's good enough for a first effort.

endlessvoid94 16y ago
Splitting it up would definitely detract from the point. I doubt many would discern the irony in it. One thing that's relevant: very few "hackers" obtain really good, close friends early in life. I've been lucky to have found a few very, very good friendships in middle and high school, and very few since. It continually amazes me how shallow and disconnected most people remain for most of their lives -- I find myself coming back to old friendships constantly (in terms of thinking about how we relate to each other). For example, playing in a band in high school was educational. Being so intimate (in certain ways) with my friends to a point where we could play musically and make mistakes and recover through mere eye contact was quite an experience. It's something that's difficult to replicate, especially in a field that's so disconnected from human contact. I really appreciated this article because it articulated something I've felt for a long time but haven't been disciplined enough to accurately reflect upon.
- grovulent 16y ago
  Is that true about hackers not really having close friends? I don't know as many hackers as I would like - but two of my very closest friends are hackers (and how I came to be exposed to the culture). Besides that - I've always assumed that hacker culture is very closely related to nerd culture - wherein I find the greatest propensity for intimacy.
  - endlessvoid94 16y ago
    It's probably all relative. I know that the friends I have from high school are much more intimate (again, in certain ways) than any other friends I've made since. It might have to do with the amount of shared adversity or something like that, and tons of people don't ever experience that. But who knows. I'm only a single data point, so it's certainly dangerous for me to make assumptions like that.
    - grovulent 16y ago
      I'd be surprised if the phenomena of the difficulty of establishing intimate relations later on in life isn't actually universal. The obvious reason why this would be the case is that people have less time when they are older. And intimacy requires lots of time.
  - anonimouse 16y ago
    I can't really speak for hackers at large, but in general the hacker community is seen as semi-autistic, and I've been diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder (Aspergers). I think perhaps the article (quite excellent otherwise) underplays and maybe misunderstands slightly the way that kind of autistic outlook can alter intimacy. That sort of situation he describes, where you find someone you think you're intimate with and it turns out it's all a lie -- that happens a lot if you're unable to correctly interpret the way people behave. So early "close friends" aren't friends at all, and you never let later friends get close because you can't trust them. At least that's how it is with me, and a lot of people with Aspergers have it much worse. Then again, a lot of people in the hacker community have it much better. But if the hacker community is correctly characterized as autistic... a lack of close friends relative to "normal" people wouldn't surprise me, both early and later in life.
mokudekiru 16y ago
I think you can break it up. After finally getting through the whole thing (which took many installments over the course of two days, due to my schedule actually and not my poor attention span) I see how interconnected all of your ideas are and how the missed intimacy between the artist and hacker (and the irony there) only makes complete sense at the very end. Really fascinating stuff, the entire article. However, I think where you really shine here is in your descriptions of what intimacy and signaling are, their connection, the role of play in both, and how because intimacy is so valuable, there can be no direct "signal" for it. That plus your close analysis of the first scene of The Social Network, would make a killer essay (although perhaps more about human psychology than the dystopia you're painting here). I also would have liked to see more examples of places today where (and how and why) intimacy is already being undermined. I think we all have an intuitive sense of, "yeah, now we have lots of really shallow facebook friends instead of a few REAL friends," but that's usually about as far as most people go when making such an argument. Having a face-to-face, one-on-one conversation still feels quite a bit more personal than any computer-mediated communication, and I think most people would agree that it would be nearly impossible to create a real, intimate relationship without some significant personal interaction like that. But why do we feel that way? Now that I've read your article, I think that (contrary to popular belief), it's not just that we can't tell when someone is being sarcastic on instant messenger. I think you've nailed it when you say, "Notice how relaxed and off-the-record exhange and role-play is becoming a more risky enterprise. All your emails, your musings on your blog – even your google searches. It can all be used against you." We NEED to have conversations that are transient, that we know no one else can ever listen in on. Plus, it's important to occasionally have one's full attention, and knowing that they aren't simultaneously having the same conversation with 9 other people (getting back to your whole theme of "intimacy takes time and is expensive"). As someone who has come of age with the internet, I kind of take it for granted that anything I ever type into a computer may be one day used to humiliate me (well, at least ever since it happened the first time, around age 11) -- I'm sure this has deeply affected how I approach trust, play, and intimacy. I probably have lots more thoughts that will surface as soon as I hit "reply," but as I'm trying to keep this short enough that you read it, I'll stop here :)
- grovulent 16y ago

endlessvoid94 16y ago

Splitting it up would definitely detract from the point. I doubt many would discern the irony in it. One thing that's relevant: very few "hackers" obtain really good, close friends early in life. I've been lucky to have found a few very, very good friendships in middle and high school, and very few since. It continually amazes me how shallow and disconnected most people remain for most of their lives -- I find myself coming back to old friendships constantly (in terms of thinking about how we relate to each other). For example, playing in a band in high school was educational. Being so intimate (in certain ways) with my friends to a point where we could play musically and make mistakes and recover through mere eye contact was quite an experience. It's something that's difficult to replicate, especially in a field that's so disconnected from human contact. I really appreciated this article because it articulated something I've felt for a long time but haven't been disciplined enough to accurately reflect upon.

grovulent 16y ago
Is that true about hackers not really having close friends? I don't know as many hackers as I would like - but two of my very closest friends are hackers (and how I came to be exposed to the culture). Besides that - I've always assumed that hacker culture is very closely related to nerd culture - wherein I find the greatest propensity for intimacy.
- endlessvoid94 16y ago
  It's probably all relative. I know that the friends I have from high school are much more intimate (again, in certain ways) than any other friends I've made since. It might have to do with the amount of shared adversity or something like that, and tons of people don't ever experience that. But who knows. I'm only a single data point, so it's certainly dangerous for me to make assumptions like that.
  - grovulent 16y ago
    I'd be surprised if the phenomena of the difficulty of establishing intimate relations later on in life isn't actually universal. The obvious reason why this would be the case is that people have less time when they are older. And intimacy requires lots of time.
- anonimouse 16y ago
  I can't really speak for hackers at large, but in general the hacker community is seen as semi-autistic, and I've been diagnosed with an autistic-spectrum disorder (Aspergers). I think perhaps the article (quite excellent otherwise) underplays and maybe misunderstands slightly the way that kind of autistic outlook can alter intimacy. That sort of situation he describes, where you find someone you think you're intimate with and it turns out it's all a lie -- that happens a lot if you're unable to correctly interpret the way people behave. So early "close friends" aren't friends at all, and you never let later friends get close because you can't trust them. At least that's how it is with me, and a lot of people with Aspergers have it much worse. Then again, a lot of people in the hacker community have it much better. But if the hacker community is correctly characterized as autistic... a lack of close friends relative to "normal" people wouldn't surprise me, both early and later in life.

mokudekiru 16y ago

I think you can break it up. After finally getting through the whole thing (which took many installments over the course of two days, due to my schedule actually and not my poor attention span) I see how interconnected all of your ideas are and how the missed intimacy between the artist and hacker (and the irony there) only makes complete sense at the very end. Really fascinating stuff, the entire article. However, I think where you really shine here is in your descriptions of what intimacy and signaling are, their connection, the role of play in both, and how because intimacy is so valuable, there can be no direct "signal" for it. That plus your close analysis of the first scene of The Social Network, would make a killer essay (although perhaps more about human psychology than the dystopia you're painting here). I also would have liked to see more examples of places today where (and how and why) intimacy is already being undermined. I think we all have an intuitive sense of, "yeah, now we have lots of really shallow facebook friends instead of a few REAL friends," but that's usually about as far as most people go when making such an argument. Having a face-to-face, one-on-one conversation still feels quite a bit more personal than any computer-mediated communication, and I think most people would agree that it would be nearly impossible to create a real, intimate relationship without some significant personal interaction like that. But why do we feel that way? Now that I've read your article, I think that (contrary to popular belief), it's not just that we can't tell when someone is being sarcastic on instant messenger. I think you've nailed it when you say, "Notice how relaxed and off-the-record exhange and role-play is becoming a more risky enterprise. All your emails, your musings on your blog – even your google searches. It can all be used against you." We NEED to have conversations that are transient, that we know no one else can ever listen in on. Plus, it's important to occasionally have one's full attention, and knowing that they aren't simultaneously having the same conversation with 9 other people (getting back to your whole theme of "intimacy takes time and is expensive"). As someone who has come of age with the internet, I kind of take it for granted that anything I ever type into a computer may be one day used to humiliate me (well, at least ever since it happened the first time, around age 11) -- I'm sure this has deeply affected how I approach trust, play, and intimacy. I probably have lots more thoughts that will surface as soon as I hit "reply," but as I'm trying to keep this short enough that you read it, I'll stop here :)

grovulent 16y ago