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Are Hackers the New Luddites? [audio]
- cyberlab 6y agoThis is a synopsis of the book described here: https://www.versobooks.com/books/3184-breaking-things-at-work https://www.versobooks.com/books/3184-breaking-things-at-wor... Breaking Things at Work. The Luddites Are Right About Why You Hate Your Job, by Gavin Mueller The basic gist is that software is eating people's jobs, and everything has to be an /app/ these days or it's not credible.
- infoseek12 6y agoCan you explain how this relates to hackers being the new Luddites? I haven’t had a chance to listen to the podcast yet but I can’t see how it’s description or yours relates to the title.
- cyberlab 6y ago> the seeds of this resistance are already present in the neo-Luddite efforts of hackers, pirates, and dark web users who are challenging surveillance and control, often through older systems of communication technology I actually don't agree that using the dark web is using older technology (but I can see why using the postal system to deliver contraband to households would be old tech). Tor is relatively recent tech that people can use. I think what the writer means is that hackers usually try to avoid prosecution by encrypting literally everything they do (an old cypherpunk tactic), so when they eventually get vanned by a LEA they have nothing to hand over for evidence. How this is being a Luddite though is questionable. There is a disconnect there.
- tomc1985 6y agoI identify as a 'hacker' in the 2600/Phrack tradition, and I definitely feel like a luddite rejecting the centralization of control as everything moves into the cloud, and proliferation of anti-consumer software that disempowers. Linux and BSD are beginning to feel like the last bastions of true user freedom, and the only remaining place that I have any control over my destiny as a user (and creator) of software. DRM, app stores, subscription models, SaaS... I would burn all of these things to ground if I could
- SCHiM 6y agoGrew up reading Phrack too. Work as pentester these days. I understand code deeply, and have tried my hand at everything from memory corruption exploits to javascript SPA apps. I hate technology more and more. It's moving in the wrong direction. Almost everything technological seems to be used to increase control over individuals, extract money, track or predict. No company can seem to withstand the lure and the power that comes from controlling, analyzing and aggressively tracking users. Every traditional device that works just fine, now only has 'smart' alternatives available. The only value-add for the consumer appears to be that I can use my smartphone as the thermostat remote. The value for the energy company seems to be to better predict when to raise prices and bill & track me.
- ethbr0 6y agoI think you can simplify this entire thread into: Software that's built with money, keeps making design decisions that increase profit. Software that's built ambivalent to money, makes other design decisions. Most software is built with money. The only thing that feels like it will fix this is a software/hardware bill of rights. E.g. right to repair, right to source, etc. Otherwise, things will get more exploitive, as products get cheaper.
- jakelazaroff 6y agoFrankly, any discussion about this invariably becomes a critique of capitalism. If you further generalize “software” to “organization”, your examples would include the various decisions companies make to increase profit: polluting, exploiting their workers, etc. At some point, we just have to acknowledge that a free market simply does not work.
- ethbr0 6y agoA free market is extremely efficient at some things. It's also extremely terrible at other things. Of all the options, a free market with regulation to internalize social externalities seems the optimal solution.
- tenebrisalietum 6y agoHackers in the classical sense don't like being part of an authoritarian structure. What do you do when the technological world that you may have had a hand in creating turns on you, when technology and computing becomes an enslavement rather than a liberation? It makes sense for hackers to then find freedom without technology.
- klyrs 6y agoI'm a Luddite and a luddite. There's a distinction that folks fail to make: in my jargon, a Luddite opposes the automation of labor without a plan to support the displaced laborers (as the followers of Ludd), and a luddite opposes the use of technology (a perverse interpretation of Ludd as an opponent of technology) I automate all kinds of stuff for my job, of course; I'm a cyborg and my brain works better when I can offload processing to a CPU. When I make design decisions that impact laborers at my company, that's something I think a lot about -- if it can make their job less harmful (in terms of RSI, etc), that's great; if I'm going to put somebody out of work, I'll reconsider telling my boss about an option I see. But lots of tech is totally out of my control. IOT bugs the hell out of me, especially with everything phoning home. I hate that people willingly allow google, amazon, apple, tesla and onstar to straight up listen to every word that's said in their house/car. Hell, I don't even like cars made after the 80s. When I grew up, there were people who reliably knew how everything in the pedestrian world worked, and could generally be counted on to fix anything that broke (except perhaps RF electronics, people specialize in that because big caps go brrr). But today, pretty much everything is unfixable; even furniture is mostly ikea or (somehow) lesser-quality pressboard crap. So to me, saying that hackers are the new luddites is a statement about control. We want to own the objects we buy. We want to hack them, fix them, repurpose them. I'm in a relative minority on the labor theory thing
- Rule35 6y ago> I'm a Luddite and a luddite. There's a distinction that folks fail to make: in my jargon, a Luddite opposes the automation of labor without a plan to support the displaced laborers (as the followers of Ludd) Being aware of the effects of automation seems wise. My problem with Ludditism as a philosophy is that it seems to focus anger on the businesses that created the jobs in the first place rather than focusing energy on the government (ie, the people) making more jobs. Why does offering someone something become a promise to keep doing so?
- narrator 6y agoI was trying to get a zoomer relative of mine interested in technology. I said, "let's mine cryptocurrency." He didn't want to because, according to him, "that's hacking." Kids these days!
- rory 6y ago"I found an exploit in mom and dad's electric account!" =D
- reaperducer 6y agoI was trying to get a zoomer relative of mine interested in technology. I said, "let's mine cryptocurrency." He didn't want to because, according to him, "that's hacking." Kids these days! The Z's are shaping up to be... interesting. From what I've seen so far, they're turning out to be very much like Gen X. On the other hand, I see very little difference between the Millennials and the Boomers. I find it amusing to see them trading barbs about one another, while exhibiting nearly identical traits. (Social media addiction, persecution complex, entitlement complex, obsession with money, etc.)
- IAmWorried 6y agoBeside the point, but IMO, all podcasts should have a transcription option as well. I unfortunately just don't have the attention span to listen to hours of people talking, but put it in text format and I have zero issues.
- FpUser 6y agoSame here. When something can be answered in few written words now there is often lengthy video tutorial where most of the time taken by mouse aimlessly jumping all over the screen in search of that magical button. Same with podcasts obviously.
- nonameiguess 6y agoYeah, I was tempted to comment that I guess I'm a Luddite because my reaction to seeing any link to a video or audio file is "please just give me text."
- kradeelav 6y agoAbsolutely. It would also be a net benefit for those who can't hear well and/or also don't have the quietness/tech to listen in peace. Way too many times I've had to pass up on podcasts in general because there isn't a transcript.
- alisonkisk 6y agoStartup / App opportunity? Automated transcripts are pretty good.
- 6y ago
- agumonkey 6y agoI sense a trend https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-happens-to-tech-workers-when-their-skills-become-obsolete?utm_source=pocket-newtab https://getpocket.com/explore/item/what-happens-to-tech-work...
- hn3333 6y agoLet's be realistic.. let's say you are a c++ programmer and want to learn some modern JS framework. I bet you it will literally take less than a week of concentrated study work for you to become better than 80-90% of people working with it. You can get a book on the subject, there's great tutorials, heck, just reading the reference will get you far. This is true for a lot of stuff on youtube, coursera etc. I believe. It's for people who don't want to get to the destination faster, by reading a few books and doing the exercises in them.
- busterarm 6y agoEveryone has gaps in experience. I've worked in both of these kinds of domains and different kinds of people thrive at doing each. The kind of problems you face are different. Most of the backend C++ types I've worked with aren't so great at "design for failure" types of environments whereas on the web development side of things I've found people are much more receptive. I'm working with a few hundred backend engineers who all have a hard time with thinking infrastructure is always available and can handle infinite throughput. They absolutely stink at reasoning about the network. And these aren't dummies -- they're all MIT/Waterloo/etc grads.
- pedrosorio 6y ago> I'm working with a few hundred backend engineers who all have a hard time with thinking infrastructure is always available and can handle infinite throughput. Could you clarify this statement? Are you saying you work with hundreds of backend engineers: - who all believe infra is always available and can handle infinite throughput (???) or - who can't wrap their head around an environment where infra is so scalable / high availability that it might as well be "infinite" and so they are always looking designing for tradeoffs that don't exist in your environment? If the former, where do these people work? If the latter, where do these people work?
- _wldu 6y agoA better term than Luddite may be obstructionist. Hackers object to new technology due to their disagreeing with everything Cloud, Tracking, limited user rights, DRM, etc.
- HWR_14 6y agoThe Luddites also objected to new technology for their reasons. They weren't reacting on religious grounds that it was inherently evil.
- shadowgovt 6y agoIt depends on how wide you cast the net of "hacker." I think people who take things apart for fun and mash them together in new, unplanned ways can tend to build up a healthy respect for unexpected consequences. That can translate into an extremely reasonable tendency to shoulder the role of doom-sayer for any large system that could have huge societal impact. That's the thing about the Luddites... They were, perhaps, short-sighted, but they weren't exactly wrong. The Industrial Revolution was absolutely disastrous for entire ways of life and paved over tens of thousands of people on the path of progress. I personally see their failing not in their desired goals but in their methods. ... but on the other hand, hackers are also the ones building cloud services, user tracking systems, and DRM protocols. Again, depending on how wide you cast the net.
- i_have_an_idea 6y agoHah, you should see the comment threads in some of the European nation subreddits on Reddit, whenever an article mentioning FAANG / Big Tech comes up. They really want to burn them.
- progre 6y agoThose subreddits are not exactly hacker hotbeds though
- KingMachiavelli 6y agoI was going to say no but then I realized I would be unfairly judging the actual Luddites. (I would like to say that I am going by the podcast blurp rather than its content so they may very well cover the point I am making). Hackers seem to oppose 'new' things in the technology space because most of them limit us and bind us to monolithic entity. Similarly, Luddites did not technically oppose technology but rather were outraged at their own loss of autonomy as crafts were replaced by mechanized, industrial production. Really the opposition of large, opaque, and closed software and services has very similar underlying drives as that of the Luddites. It's then not really a surprise when Marxist themes (some would say more libertarian but in practice not really) are somewhat common in open source & hacker spaces.
- Mc_Big_G 6y agoIf you use the hate of crypto on HN as a metric, then yes.
- 1996 6y agoFrom my bag of citations: "crypto is to millenials what the internet was to boomers"! A few of them got it, but for most people what didn't exist when they were teens is some heresy that threaten society. Yet as usual, society will move on, and those unable to adapt will be left behind.
- TacticalCoder 6y agoI'm not against technology: I'm against inferior technology. I know what you can build with a computer: with a smartphone not so much. I don't see many professional sound engineers, architects, chip engineers, developers and all the myriad of profession requiring serious tools to do serious work working from their mobile phone or from their Internet-of-Insecure-Shitty-Poinless-Thing-with-a-3-inches-screen (yup, I know, there's that one guy who made a hit pop music tune using only his smartphone, but that's more than uncommon). Yet because there are a very select few megastar who became famous because they kept posting selfies taken with their smartphones, we are to believe that the smartphone "is the new computer". Luddite? What about we talk about the specs of my workstation vs your IoT device? We'll see who's adopting modern tech ; )
- Pfhreak 6y ago> I'm not against technology Neither were the Luddites! The Luddites were a labor movement who wanted to ensure that workers in textile mills were being treated fairly. Many Luddites were highly skilled and happy to work with automated looms, they just didn't want factories to fire all the skilled labor and pay pennies on the dollar to unskilled labor. (While holding cloth prices steady.)
- Pfhreak 6y agoAlso, as a separate comment, the day will come where software development is automated in some capacity. All the high skill workers may be competing with workers with much less training at lower wages. The Luddites are a good cautionary tale about when you should protect your working conditions and rights (when the demand for your services is at its peak). So many engineers I talk to these days say things like, "Why would I want to organize/engage in collective bargaining now? My life is good!" rather than, "My work is highly desirable, and my employer might actually come to the negotiating table because it is challenging to replace us right now."
- jude- 6y ago> the day will come where software development is automated in some capacity. It already is. It's called a compiler.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- at_a_remove 6y agoThis resonates with me. Two different people at a job dubbed me "The Technological Luddite" because of, among other things, my lack of a cell phone, the absence of a Facebook page, pointing out where the "all you have to do is ..." algorithms break, and so on. I will admit it, I prefer the downslope of the Hype Cycle. I choose boring technology. At the end of the day, I am trying to solve problems, and playing with new stuff often doesn't pay out for solving those problems. I related this once on another site: we had this process that was heavily manual and the people performing the task would want this part at the end automated, or maybe a reminder email at the end, or some instructions here ... can we just do that part by computer? Bit by bit, the process maxed out on automation. And then the people who asked for the automation were fired and replaced with minimum wage intern types. Also, the final product was inferior but hey ... I think technology can be marvelous but we often do stupid things with it, ending up in unemployment and some crap results, like "American cheese."
- jude- 6y agoParaphrasing Anton Ego: "I don't like software; I love it. If I don't love it, I don't use it."
- Mattasher 6y agoIf you find this conversation interesting you might want to check out this Ep of The Filter: Our Glorious Future as Amish or Termites. See https://open.spotify.com/episode/6uSd3fSZz3gg6idbdUyvKB https://open.spotify.com/episode/6uSd3fSZz3gg6idbdUyvKB
- Ericson2314 6y agoOh how timely, Gavin Mueller, the first author mentioned here, is part of a this panel tomorrow https://twitter.com/SciSocJournal/status/1368662709923966983 https://twitter.com/SciSocJournal/status/1368662709923966983 with Aaron Benanov. My take from reading some of each is that the disagreement is more superficial: Benanov has a soft spot for what automation could be but is very much keen on chronicling the economic context it's actually gone down in, while Mueller likes to criticize "actually existing automation" itself. But, I guess we'll see how it actually goes down tomorrow.
- smitty1e 6y agoJonathan Corbet in this week's LWN: > Your editor recently moved house; part of that move involved carefully packing up the dust-covered household television set, gently transporting it to the new home, and lovingly moving it to its new location — followed by gracelessly dropping it on the floor while lifting it into place. The search for a replacement involved asking a salesman for a reasonable "non-smart" television, a request that was met with mirthful incredulity. It would appear that such things no longer exist; all televisions are built to be placed on the network now. https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/850218/d38e18d65e4d8fc5/ https://lwn.net/SubscriberLink/850218/d38e18d65e4d8fc5/