Recently I’m having this impression that hackers and punks are quite similar in their attitude toward their environment. How does that come? I think both do not show respect to the things which surround them. In my opinion in both cases it’s all about a special relationship with your environment.
Look at punks for example: they continuously hack their environment! They may pee to whichever wall they like if they want to, not showing respect to the “common agreement” that this isn’t a very nice thing to do. They hack the wall by using it for something it wasn’t meant to be used to (in this case to be peed at). This is, by the way, the most common way hackers define this word: creativly using things for a purpose they weren’t made for in first place as an alternative and maybe even better way of solving a certain problem.
Of course, every action causes a reaction and you should also mind what consequences they may have. And comparing this “real-life” punk to computer punks I’d say he’s more of a cracker than a hacker.
So, what is the key of success for punks and hackers? Creativity. Creativity comes mainly from breaking rules. By “rules” I don’t really mean laws imposed by some “real” government but the rules of “common sense”, of “common agreements”, of “common ways of seeing things”. In other words, walking outside the common paths of human culture can be an essential quality for being successful. It can offer solutions for problems you’d never have thought of if you’d stayed in common patterns of human thought.
In my view, “breaking rules” in this sense is the key to all kinds of development. Not finding obvious solutions, but crazy solutions. Extraordinary solutions. Maybe even evolutionary solutions. I’d say that this is the way of the hacker, the punk and the artist in general. Dare the extraordinary, even if it seems crazy - but that is precisely the point!
ps: I wrote this post after having a laugh about this picture!
December 18th, 2006 at 11:44 pm
hey!
Nice you had a update on your blog! It’s toooooo long time ago I update mine! But for what concerns what you are writing about: you’re right as far as I know… the term cyber-punk isn’t taken randomly… it’s the reason hackers exist… punks that exile themselves in one of many-thousands virtual worlds! Interesting things a decentralised network can be the *home* or vital backbone(on one planet) for a lot of underground networks formerly universes, where given rules exist that are accepted all over the world and have nothing to do with the environments where people that participate are actually living… it’s a matter of how you live your life - another interpretation of reality! Your personal truth in the end…
December 29th, 2006 at 10:28 pm
Thank you very much for your reply! So, there actually ARE some people who read this blog. Nice! ^^
September 25th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
I am reading it too…
But i am not really shure if peeing is the best way to explain the attitude of a hacker. I would define a punk as a rebell who tries to live his own ideal in a foreign government. While the hacker is a scientist in a world without rules. I mean: until a hacker does not find out about some strange coincidence, the government does not even know that it is to bann. (and sometimes they bann really every stupid thing).
October 13th, 2007 at 7:13 pm
Hey iseth, thanks for commenting!
The term “hacker”, though, doesn’t sound like a synonym for “rebel”. In the first place, at least. Although some hackers declare themselves as rebel fighters against the evil empire (lol), the essence of a hacker is, in my opinion, the childful play with ones environment, a certain “innocence”, free of any kind of prejudicial knowledge, not directed by rules but freed through curiosity. Therefore I agree with you that hackers are important for our society; they definitely are important in shaping it.
January 3rd, 2008 at 4:43 pm
I agree with you that a Hacker is more a playing child than a rebel. It is the punk that sounds a bit like rebel for me. Eventhough…the fact that a hacker tries to broaden his mind makes him/her crash with the rules of our society some day. This is why a hacker is somehow a rebel too, even if not on the traditional way of peeing on walls.
January 3rd, 2008 at 5:25 pm
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