4 ms·

Erm. Wow. That's really cool and all. I mean, the guy was obviously amazingly talented and everything. And this is a really cool tidbit of information that

Erm. Wow. That's really cool and all. I mean, the guy was obviously amazingly talented and everything. And this is a really cool tidbit of information that lets me look back on his career as a performer in a new light. But really, folks, is it a good idea to claim Jacko as an ideal to which people in this community might aspire? I don't want to speak ill of the dead here. The guy lived a hard life, and had been an object of scorn and derision for a long time. I hope he had found some kind of peace of mind before he died. But I gotta ask -- don't hackers already get enough grief for being thin, pale, eccentric, socially awkward, obsessed with artificiality, and bizarre in how they relate to women? Let the downmodding begin.

johnnybgoode 17y ago
Who here is asking for hackers to copy all of Jackson's traits? > Let the downmodding begin. I expect your wish will be granted...
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  Okay then. Which of Michael Jackson's traits do you think are worthy of emulation? Did he have any traits that people should be discouraged from emulating?
  - johnnybgoode 17y ago
    I think you might have misunderstood. It was you who brought up the idea of claiming MJ as an ideal, but I don't believe anyone here has done that.
    - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
      Obviously, not an ideal like Gandhi or MLK. But if Michael Jackson was a hacker, he was a nearly ideal one. He was recognized as a musical prodigy when he was 5. After that, because of his domineering, exploitative, and probably abusive father, music was basically all he thought about [1]. These are the same childhood circumstances that produced Mozart and Beethoven. The experts all seem to agree that he was an absolute master musician and dancer. At the very least, he made some of the most popular albums of all time. It's hard to imagine anyone achieving that kind of success without a lifetime of dedicated practice. I can definitely see the shoe thing as the product of someone who spent a lot of mental energy thinking about new ways to push the envelope in a song-and-dance act. So, to sum up, if Michael Jackson was a hacker, he was a great one. And the trouble is, if Michael Jackson was a Great Hacker [3], he's the only one I know [4]. I happen to agree with Paul Graham's take on Greatness: So if you ask a great hacker how good he is, he's almost certain to reply, I don't know. He's not just being modest. He really doesn't know. And none of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. Which puts us in a weird situation: WE DON'T KNOW WHO OUR HEROES SHOULD BE. (emphasis is mine) I'm really not comfortable with this conclusion, because I'd like to be a Great Hacker myself someday, and it's pretty obvious that Michael Jackson's troubles were partly caused by his success. Of course, I'd love to find a way to escape this line of reasoning... [1] Obviously, this isn't something anyone would want to live through, but it did have the effect of making Jackson focus on music the way a great hacker would. If music was the only way for him to earn his father's love when he was five years old, then he definitely would have wound up loving music [2]. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105932403 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1059324... [2] Yes, this is pretty twisted. Hard to believe. Most of the reporting I've read about the Jacksons says something to similar effect, though. I'm inclined to believe it's true just because it would be such obvious libel otherwise. [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html [4] Or more precisely, if we're going to call MJ a hacker, I have more evidence that he's a great hacker than I do for anyone else.
      - johnnybgoode 17y ago
        I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you're saying. Are you asking how one can become a great hacker without having troubles similar to Michael Jackson's? It's obvious you've put a lot of thought into this post, so I'm just trying to understand...
      - voidpointer 17y ago
        I think it's pretty certain that you don't become a great hacker by trying to be a great hacker.
      - plinkplonk 17y ago
        "you don't become a great hacker by trying to be a great hacker" for sufficient intensities of "try" I would have thought that is exactly how one becomes a great hacker. How else does one become a great hacker?
        sp332 17y ago
        Well, effort isn't everything. See Eric Raymond, for example.
        voidpointer 17y ago
        Think about the people PG mentions in his essay. Do you think any of those ever formulated the goal to become a "great hacker"?
evilneanderthal 17y ago
But I gotta ask -- don't <creative people, innovators, scientists, artists, pioneers> already get enough grief for being <different>? Yes. Yes they do. But thanks for adding to it anyway!
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  You know who gets even more grief for being different than the creative people, innovators, scientists, artists, and pioneers? The mentally ill. Is that wrong?
dinkumthinkum 17y ago
But the irony here is that you're whining about how "hackers get grief" for being totally dense socially but your comments seems to be totally socially dense. It's really interesting to see how someone can be ironic about being ironic.
- mnemonicsloth 17y ago
  You're right. There's a good chance I'm totally socially inept, especially in this medium with no vocal cues or facial expressions to carry the emotional shading that I'd like to attach to what I write. But is it really so surprising that my thoughts are internally inconsistent? So long as we're playing self-reference games, is it socially savvy to expect an absence of hypocrisy?
  - dinkumthinkum 17y ago
    Do you need a shovel?
zimbabwe 17y ago
But really, folks, is it a good idea to claim Jacko as an ideal to which people in this community might aspire? The man took something that was considered to be geeky and odd - dancing - practiced it feverishly and from a young age, and almost singlehandedly made his own brand of dance mainstream, sexy, and cool. To the end he worked hard at trying to keep himself at the peak of his abilities. If he's a hacker, he was the ultimate hacker - despite being a bizarro geek in nearly every way up to and including the gradual draining of his skin pigmentation, he did what he loved, became famous for it, was the best at his line of work, and was a sex icon for two decades. If that's not hacking I don't know what is.
- menloparkbum 17y ago
  he did what he loved But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do, eventually becoming the only things he knew how to do? It seems like he almost had no choice in the matter, and all his eccentricities were his way of coping with destiny.
  - zimbabwe 17y ago
    I don't know enough about Michael Jackson to be able to respond well to this, but he made his career out of it, invented his own moved, and genuinely seemed to love what he did. That's not enough to say it was of his own accord, but I'd like to think it was.
  - shiranaihito 17y ago
    > But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do Someone with that much musicality in him will make music no matter what. He's right up there with Stevie Wonder and Prince. They make music.
- InkweaverReview 17y ago
  You have to admit that Michael Jackson was just plain weird. But then many of the greatest innovators were also considered weird in their time. I don't think that anyone would want to emulate every aspect of his strange lifestyle, but he definitely came up with a few ideas that were worthy of a hacker. He found new ways to entertain people, and whatever strange personal identity crises he may have had he still hacked together an identity that most people are at least slightly familiar with. To my way of thinking, that is relatively successful, even if he did end up dying young. I think if there is anything worth emulating it would be persistence.

johnnybgoode 17y ago

Who here is asking for hackers to copy all of Jackson's traits? > Let the downmodding begin. I expect your wish will be granted...

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
Okay then. Which of Michael Jackson's traits do you think are worthy of emulation? Did he have any traits that people should be discouraged from emulating?
- johnnybgoode 17y ago
  I think you might have misunderstood. It was you who brought up the idea of claiming MJ as an ideal, but I don't believe anyone here has done that.
  - mnemonicsloth 17y ago
    Obviously, not an ideal like Gandhi or MLK. But if Michael Jackson was a hacker, he was a nearly ideal one. He was recognized as a musical prodigy when he was 5. After that, because of his domineering, exploitative, and probably abusive father, music was basically all he thought about [1]. These are the same childhood circumstances that produced Mozart and Beethoven. The experts all seem to agree that he was an absolute master musician and dancer. At the very least, he made some of the most popular albums of all time. It's hard to imagine anyone achieving that kind of success without a lifetime of dedicated practice. I can definitely see the shoe thing as the product of someone who spent a lot of mental energy thinking about new ways to push the envelope in a song-and-dance act. So, to sum up, if Michael Jackson was a hacker, he was a great one. And the trouble is, if Michael Jackson was a Great Hacker [3], he's the only one I know [4]. I happen to agree with Paul Graham's take on Greatness: So if you ask a great hacker how good he is, he's almost certain to reply, I don't know. He's not just being modest. He really doesn't know. And none of us know, except about people we've actually worked with. Which puts us in a weird situation: WE DON'T KNOW WHO OUR HEROES SHOULD BE. (emphasis is mine) I'm really not comfortable with this conclusion, because I'd like to be a Great Hacker myself someday, and it's pretty obvious that Michael Jackson's troubles were partly caused by his success. Of course, I'd love to find a way to escape this line of reasoning... [1] Obviously, this isn't something anyone would want to live through, but it did have the effect of making Jackson focus on music the way a great hacker would. If music was the only way for him to earn his father's love when he was five years old, then he definitely would have wound up loving music [2]. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105932403 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1059324... [2] Yes, this is pretty twisted. Hard to believe. Most of the reporting I've read about the Jacksons says something to similar effect, though. I'm inclined to believe it's true just because it would be such obvious libel otherwise. [3] http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html [4] Or more precisely, if we're going to call MJ a hacker, I have more evidence that he's a great hacker than I do for anyone else.
    - johnnybgoode 17y ago
      I'm not sure if I understand exactly what you're saying. Are you asking how one can become a great hacker without having troubles similar to Michael Jackson's? It's obvious you've put a lot of thought into this post, so I'm just trying to understand...
    - voidpointer 17y ago
      I think it's pretty certain that you don't become a great hacker by trying to be a great hacker.
    - plinkplonk 17y ago
      "you don't become a great hacker by trying to be a great hacker" for sufficient intensities of "try" I would have thought that is exactly how one becomes a great hacker. How else does one become a great hacker?
      - sp332 17y ago
        Well, effort isn't everything. See Eric Raymond, for example.
      - voidpointer 17y ago
        Think about the people PG mentions in his essay. Do you think any of those ever formulated the goal to become a "great hacker"?

evilneanderthal 17y ago

But I gotta ask -- don't <creative people, innovators, scientists, artists, pioneers> already get enough grief for being <different>? Yes. Yes they do. But thanks for adding to it anyway!

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
You know who gets even more grief for being different than the creative people, innovators, scientists, artists, and pioneers? The mentally ill. Is that wrong?

dinkumthinkum 17y ago

But the irony here is that you're whining about how "hackers get grief" for being totally dense socially but your comments seems to be totally socially dense. It's really interesting to see how someone can be ironic about being ironic.

mnemonicsloth 17y ago
You're right. There's a good chance I'm totally socially inept, especially in this medium with no vocal cues or facial expressions to carry the emotional shading that I'd like to attach to what I write. But is it really so surprising that my thoughts are internally inconsistent? So long as we're playing self-reference games, is it socially savvy to expect an absence of hypocrisy?
- dinkumthinkum 17y ago
  Do you need a shovel?

zimbabwe 17y ago

But really, folks, is it a good idea to claim Jacko as an ideal to which people in this community might aspire? The man took something that was considered to be geeky and odd - dancing - practiced it feverishly and from a young age, and almost singlehandedly made his own brand of dance mainstream, sexy, and cool. To the end he worked hard at trying to keep himself at the peak of his abilities. If he's a hacker, he was the ultimate hacker - despite being a bizarro geek in nearly every way up to and including the gradual draining of his skin pigmentation, he did what he loved, became famous for it, was the best at his line of work, and was a sex icon for two decades. If that's not hacking I don't know what is.

menloparkbum 17y ago
he did what he loved But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do, eventually becoming the only things he knew how to do? It seems like he almost had no choice in the matter, and all his eccentricities were his way of coping with destiny.
- zimbabwe 17y ago
  I don't know enough about Michael Jackson to be able to respond well to this, but he made his career out of it, invented his own moved, and genuinely seemed to love what he did. That's not enough to say it was of his own accord, but I'd like to think it was.
- shiranaihito 17y ago
  > But was he really doing what he loved, or was he partially an automaton doing what his parents engineered him to do Someone with that much musicality in him will make music no matter what. He's right up there with Stevie Wonder and Prince. They make music.
InkweaverReview 17y ago
You have to admit that Michael Jackson was just plain weird. But then many of the greatest innovators were also considered weird in their time. I don't think that anyone would want to emulate every aspect of his strange lifestyle, but he definitely came up with a few ideas that were worthy of a hacker. He found new ways to entertain people, and whatever strange personal identity crises he may have had he still hacked together an identity that most people are at least slightly familiar with. To my way of thinking, that is relatively successful, even if he did end up dying young. I think if there is anything worth emulating it would be persistence.