Friday, November 14, 2008

Hackers approach in daily life (by Martin Šesták)

The way the world is going is said to be faster than ever before, due to changes in technical development, social life or human thinking. Especially in developed or fast developing countries have people to face these changes in their everyday life. In the response, they have to change their daily routines, habits, working stereotypes and their ways of life at all. There are several authors, who consider present changes to be dramatic and paradigmatic. Robert Theobald (1987) calls it mind-quake, formed as a parallel to earthquake. Charles Handy formulates his paradoxes on modern society and Manuel Castells (1996) comes with his book vision of new networked society. All those authors present in common, that there are in apparently huge changes in the society, not only storm in a teacup.

In the core of most of changes are information technology; above all computing, internet and networks. This new phenomenon has brought turbulences in simply all areas of human doing. Beside all technological progress, it caused also changes in people´s behaving, thinking, working, entertaining and even ethic. In connection with it, information becomes the most important good.

Hacker: The introduction

In the core of this new digital society are people calling themselves Hackers. People, who program enthusiastically and who believe that information sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their experience by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible (Himanen, 2001, Preface) A major source of historical terminology of the field, The Jargon File, offers probably the most exhaustive definition. In its meaning, except of hackers of programming and computing field can be hacker any expert or enthusiast of any kind. One might be mathematical hacker, one surgery hacker, for instance. Crucial is to enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations (The Jargon File definition of hacker, points 6 and 7).

Very important feature of the hackers’ way of work is their passion, which describes the general tenor of their activity, though its fulfillment may not be sheer joyful play in all its aspects. (Himanen, 2001, p 18). Also fore gurus of hacker culture consider the passion to be the most important aspect of any work. Linus Torvalds, the creator of Linux describes his approach in his prologue to Pekka Himanen's Hacker Ethic as follows: All of our motivations fall into three basic categories. More important, progress is about going through those very same things as “phases” in a process of evolution, a matter of passing from one category to the next. The categories, in order, are “survival”, “social life”, and “entertainment” (Himanen, 2001, XIII). Also Steve Wozniak, who built the first real personal computer in the mid-70s (Apple I and Apple II), has similar opinion on passion. His life formula is H=F3, means Happiness = Food, fun and friends. Both Wozniak´s and Torvalds´s mottos reference to Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs Theory, which consists of five basic levels: Physiological needs, Safety needs, Social needs, Esteem needs and Self-actualization.

People in developed countries spend most of their working age at work. Nevertheless, many of them state that their job is very or extremely stressful. The point and goal of both hackers´ formulas is to refer, that the work should be more enjoyable, if the society wants to be more effective and satisfied and right developing. People are already overloaded by work in despite of continual innovations and new technologies - they usually can make the process of production easier, but doesn’t respite the people.

Protestant and hacker ethic

The passion seems to be the general term, which differs previous and upcoming ethic of work. In most of professions and jobs is still promoted the protestant work ethic, which dictates the work must be done because of its purpose, going on the schedule, sometimes to extreme and often the work is being done just to be done. On the contrary, the hacker work ethic says he work should be done, because we want to do it. As hackers´ success stories show, they can make with hacker work ethic together even better job than with the protestant one, and, moreover, enjoy it (Himanen, 2001, Part Work Ethic).

Another part of hacker work ethic is based on time flexibility. The idea is that for creativity, innovation and any job where it is possible is necessary to have the right mood and proper time. Himanen claims: “Protestant ethic means also means the work-centered organization of life. The Protestant ethic introduced the idea of regular working time as the center of life. Self-organization was lost and relegated to a region of work’s leftover: the evenings as what’s left of the day, the weekend as the reminder of the week, and retirement – the leftovers of life (Himanen, 2001, p 29).

In such a schedule there isn’t a lot of space for personal setting of life. “Is our purpose at work to do time or to do something?” asks Himanen (Himanen, 2001, p 38) and recommends evaluating people not on how much time they waste, but how much they accomplish in longer time period. In my own experience, this idea I like very much, but in my personal experience, many companies go exactly against this hacker ethic’s logic. For instance, using particular “sniffing software” creates absolute ambivalent environment. In contrast, there is for example a company, where employees participate in decisions about their working hours.

Hacker ethic in practice

Time flexibility, passion, community and sharing knowledge, sources, ideas and final products are the building stones of hacker ethic. The work is done not for money at the first place, but for the highest levels of Maslow’s pyramid of needs – self- actualization, entertainment or recognition in the community. As Raymond says in his essay Homesteading the Noosphere about the social workings of open source software development, those hackers are motivated by the force of peer recognition. Recognition within a community that shares their passion is more important and more deeply satisfying than money, just as it is for scholars in academe. All of this in terms of Netiquette, moral guide advising how to behave on the net and collaborate with other users.

Field of very successful project using hacker ethic is very wide. When creating them, hackers keep some core values, which Pekka Himanen and calls as The Seven Values of the Hacker Ethic: Passion, freedom, hacker work ethic, hacker money ethic, hacker network ethic, caring and creativity (Himanen, 2001, p 139-141). We can name several successful projects, which are built up with hacker ethic ideas: Linux, Wikipedia, P2P networks or Second Life, which is commercial, but build up with contribution of community.

Hacker ethic in society

In Himanen’s other paper, Challenges to the Global Information Society (2004), he suggests applying the hacker ethic on the whole society. Summarizing both it and the Hacker Ethic, the hacker ethic should become the spirit and important part of ideology of information society, social development and creative economy.

His view on implementation hacker into everyday work is quite optimistic, but he describes most of processes and trends in general and not indeed enough. Practical implementation will need many years of tuff work on all levels of society. Some theoretical and practical inspiration I can see in Anthony Giddens´s “third way” practically used in British Labour Party policies, which could be valuable source of experience. And I have to agree with Himanen’s opinion that combining a dynamic information society with the creative welfare state could have an important role to play in more sustainable development (and even more sustainable globalization) (Himanen, 2004, p 23).

However, in my opinion, the most too far gone vision is to implement this hacker ethic and information society features to all professions. I can´t imagine applying it in routine jobs or at the desks. Another thing is, how to force (or rather persuade) the formally free companies and all the whole powerful commercialized system to accept it? Why they haven’t done it before, when it is better for them and their employees as well? If it would threaten their money, there is a huge obstacle (Janussen, 2005).

Moreover, some people needs to have an order and can´t simply make their time on their consideration, plan their timetable ad be successful herewith. By the way, most of hackers are quite eccentric, I guess. For instance, Richard Stallman, the bearded and longhaired hacker guru, attends computer gathering in a robe, and he exorcises commercial programs from the machines bought to him by his followers (Himanen, 2004, p 5). Another question is whose justice will prevail - will it be easier for young and bright students to live in this new hacker-ethical society than it is for grandmother and grandfathers (Janussen, 2005)

Nevertheless, for many jobs and professions is hacker ethic very challenging and though-provoking. Especially, for companies oriented on creativity, continuous development and innovation it will be close future. At least, to get any original ideas you need to have original (personal) environment, which hacker work ethic offers.

To be honest, if more hacker ethic’s features were implemented at my work and may be in my live at all, I would be happy.

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