Programming is Forgetting

This is a second blog post on Allison Parrish’s talk Programming is Forgetting: A New Hacker Ethic

In this second blog post I go into more detail about Allison’s talk, including some things I agree with, disagree with, and questions I believe are important to think about after having watched the talk.

The point Allison Parrish is trying to get across is that Levy’s Hacker Ethic, while making sense at first, should be re-examined. That the problems with the Hacker Ethic is not in its execution, but its underlying philosophy.

Levy’s Hacker Ethic:

Access to computers should be unlimited and total All information should be free Mistrust authority—promote decentralization Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race or position You can create art and beauty on a computer Computers can change your life for the better

My main issue with the talk is that she assumes that the source of hacker culture comes from or is heavily influenced by Levy’s Hacker Ethic. While It’s likely that the Hacker Ethic influenced hacker culture,

I don’t believe that most programmers who consider them self a hacker (in the broadest sense possible) are even aware of Levy’s Hacker Ethic in this day and age. I believe that people who consider them self a hacker in this day are simply people who are dedicated to bending computer software and hardware to their will and to their standards. Allison talks about hacker culture, but it is hard to even narrow down who belongs to the culture.

In my opinion the Hacker Ethic is still valuable as is, so long as it is taken as a list of ideals to strive for, rather than a list of commandments.

The new Hacker Ethic (Hacker Questions) Allison presents is certainly valuable if we are talking about free and open source software. Though I believe it may be more fitting to call it Software Ethic Questions as the term hacker now has such a wide range of use now.

I give this talk a thumbs up.

These are some questions I think are important to think about after watching this talk:

• How has the word Hacker changed in connotation over the years?

  • Has the word Hacker gone from meaning a passion for computers and a desire to share it with all to something else?

• Why does Allison go into detail about technical subjects (like jpeg compression) to illustrate simple points?

  • Isn’t the assumption that your audience is technical going to turn people away? Wouldn’t that go against providing access and information? Is she unintentionally diluting her premise by sharing her passion?

• How can we convince people to strive to address the Hacker Questions Allison gives as a new Hacker Ethic?

  • If one recognizes themself to have high morality and they are given the opportunity to lead an unethical software project (collecting personal information), would it be unethical to allow another individual of low morality to take the lead instead?