4 ms·

What happened to the glider hacker emblem? A pity it never took off..

• teddyh 6y ago
  It didn’t go anywhere, here it is: https://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/ https://www.catb.org/hacker-emblem/ I always thought that it was a symbol with unfortunate connotations of time-wasting. If you want to market youself with a symbol of something which is ultimately a useless distraction, this is not a attractive branding.
  • gojomo 6y ago
    In what ways are conways-game-of-life or the glider-pattern associated with time-wasting?
    • teddyh 6y ago
      The Game of Life is a fun toy, but ultimately unproductive. It does not inherently lead to anything else either; the entire field is a dead end (no matter what Stephen Wolfram says). And, what’s worse, people more or less knew this at the time, and still they let most of the best minds of a generation, as it were, be absorbed into doing nothing but the equivalent of mental navel-gazing.
      • gojomo 6y ago
        Thanks, it's interesting you see it that way - but I've never seen that view common among 'hackers'. So, I doubt that's the factor why the symbol hasn't been more widely-used, emblematically. I instead suspect mixed-feelings about anything ESR proposes, or just more generally the fact that hackers are so varied in interests/behavior that there's little need for a shared emblem. (Though, the glider appeals to a certain mindset, who have & will use it as a symbol, as when it appeared in many remembrances after John Conway's passing.)