First, I found that there are some true gems in the article and feel it is worth reading. But here is my contribution to discussion through some criticism.
In effect, hacking has arguably grown. Hacker communities,
definitely not. So what went wrong?
I assume an American wrote this and I am wondering if the above is not a mostly US American problem. Of course what is a problem for the US becomes a problem for everyone else eventually in one way or another but at the moment... EU hacker communities are more fluid and inclusive of youth and counter-political cultures. And more often than not the Tenured hackers stick around to work with and collaborate with the new and younger. Though they have plenty of problems I don't think lack of growth is one of them. There are some more inclusive hacker spaces in the US but most of the tenured and serious US hackers went commercial and stayed that way.
In the US context I agree with all the statements. Much also applies to the entire community as a whole. But what is missing is this: the community is just getting old. It is now coming into contact with what happens to any new field of discovery or thought: tenure and structure. It's a problem with memory in general. As it is created there becomes an assumption that one should reference it. This field has history now and those that come along will be forced to consider it just as someone who studies photography has to think about Atget. This requirement adds latency that naturally changes the makeup of the field.
It is important to note that our capitalist worries are
more deeply rooted in us than might seem at first, even
in the most politically diverse people. Supporting oneself
is not easy, it does not come for free. Getting some
education, finding a job, staying up-to-date... regardless
of what your aspirations are, whatever you feel obliged to
do is probably a lot, already. And it likely involves a
prevalence of "minding your own business".
Much of the article has to do with productivity issues. This is not unique to our field except that once upon a time the median age of the field was a teenager with lots of energy and time and now median age is older. It is true that the grind of day to day in societies like the US that hold capitalism as God makes it harder for one to have time for much else than survival. But 1. this isn't the case everywhere yet. Just see some of the newer capitalistic societies in the EU that have not yet shed every part of socialist history just yet. (ahem, Berlin!). 2. One should also consider that we are just getting old. Want to solve these problems, be less freaking proud, more inclusive and bring in youth. It's the same for every field. The article perhaps says the same thing but better:
If our thoughts on creating hacker groups were to be
summarised, this is how they would look: No one ever
feels like we do. They are not to be trusted and we do
not have the time for them. The only attitude consonant
to our search for a comfortable, safe life is to constrain
ourselves to our own limitations, ignore the intelligent
life out there, and surrender to the mediocracy that our
society has condemned our leisure time to.
Side note: these problems might relate to the fields chauvinism problem. from my experience women are twice as likely to be inclusive in this field. there could be many reasons for this but it's worth considering that the inclusive problem and lack of trust actually may be related to the male chauvinism issue.
Finally, that Anonymous and these types of communities will not have as much impact as l0pht, mod, lod, others... is seriously debatable!
This article discusses why recently we do not see many
hacker groups anymore, and why the ones we do, such as
Anonymous and its satellite efforts, do not succeed in
having the same cultural impact as their forefathers.
Most of the older groups such as l0pht spent their time saying XYZ company sucks because their developers missed a bug in a product. Whereas anonymous spends its time saying XYZ Gov/Inc/Policy sucks and we should riot. Which one do you think should have more impact?
Well said. It is always interesting to watch hackers age. When I read the article I felt that much of the angst was pining for the "old days" when things were better. But reminiscing always gets it wrong :-).
That said, I've been wondering of late about hacker spaces. I've been a member of Hacker Dojo now (Mountain View CA) for about 6 months and by and large when I am there it has a lot of people hanging out on the free WiFi and perhaps hacking but not a lot of interacting except with perhaps 1 or 2 close associates nearby. But in part it seems to have no purpose as hacking has had in the past. I'm trying to come up with ideas to change that.
Hacker spaces have definitely changed. In the 90s the one here was a crazy 24hr party, it's entire membership was anarchists with zero regard for laws which they considered only existed to control information. Somehow I managed amazing productivity yet was largely high out of my gourd with Skinny Puppy blasting in the background almost constantly. Everything was surprisingly well organized, we would all decide on something like we need 60 handsets to try to clone and we'd accomplish that by the end of the day. We need to code our own STS-like dialup chat board because we're not paying for a license. 25 of us would work on that until 6:00am the next morning and it'd be done even with the craziest of distractions going on, such as around 11pm a steady stream of local misfits would come in as we'd converted it into an all ages boozecan and defacto nightclub with a stupid amount of lights rigged up that were in hindsight absolutely frightening considering the terribad wiring job we hacked together. It looked like the video from Front242 - Operating Tracks but with more eye searing strobe lights.
Now the hacker space I go to is largely populated with professional developers and students so gone is the raging music, the drugs, the anarchy/activism, the close-knit community, the epic amount of crime and nobody knows each other. There's less women too, in the 90s I would say it was half and half with many girls actively participating. I can count on one hand the amount of female hackers I've seen at the new space. Even though our old space was drug fueled insanity more work seemed to get done. No group projects going on anymore, there's a few but it's usually something like making your bike glow in the dark and not hacking software just for the sake of hacking. Doesn't help that none of us have any spare time either, we are all too busy in careers/school to afford an all nighter hack session like back in the day. Barely any of us can even manage to coordinate a time when everybody can be in the same room for 5 mins for a meeting let alone work on any projects.
I know that sounds like a tautology, but bear with me. Without a project to rally behind, no one is going to automatically form little collectives and bang out cool stuff.
Things are either driven by one person or they are driven by multiple people after one person convinces them to participate and cajoles them into action. Someone, somewhere, has to provide the projects and the purpose. They then have to relentlessly follow through.
Interesting observation. I was a member of Hacker Dojo but let my membership lapse because I simply wasn't going there often enough; I still do pop in a couple times a month to use it as a coworking space (paying for the $10/day wifi access, not the free one) but I can't quite tell what I get out of it.
Then again, I'm not sure what I expect to get out of it, nor what I really should be putting into it. There don't seem to be many opportunities to strike up conversations but it's possible (probable) I'm being too passive in seeking them out.
Comments
First, I found that there are some true gems in the article and feel it is worth reading. But here is my contribution to discussion through some criticism.
I assume an American wrote this and I am wondering if the above is not a mostly US American problem. Of course what is a problem for the US becomes a problem for everyone else eventually in one way or another but at the moment... EU hacker communities are more fluid and inclusive of youth and counter-political cultures. And more often than not the Tenured hackers stick around to work with and collaborate with the new and younger. Though they have plenty of problems I don't think lack of growth is one of them. There are some more inclusive hacker spaces in the US but most of the tenured and serious US hackers went commercial and stayed that way.In the US context I agree with all the statements. Much also applies to the entire community as a whole. But what is missing is this: the community is just getting old. It is now coming into contact with what happens to any new field of discovery or thought: tenure and structure. It's a problem with memory in general. As it is created there becomes an assumption that one should reference it. This field has history now and those that come along will be forced to consider it just as someone who studies photography has to think about Atget. This requirement adds latency that naturally changes the makeup of the field.
Much of the article has to do with productivity issues. This is not unique to our field except that once upon a time the median age of the field was a teenager with lots of energy and time and now median age is older. It is true that the grind of day to day in societies like the US that hold capitalism as God makes it harder for one to have time for much else than survival. But 1. this isn't the case everywhere yet. Just see some of the newer capitalistic societies in the EU that have not yet shed every part of socialist history just yet. (ahem, Berlin!). 2. One should also consider that we are just getting old. Want to solve these problems, be less freaking proud, more inclusive and bring in youth. It's the same for every field. The article perhaps says the same thing but better: Side note: these problems might relate to the fields chauvinism problem. from my experience women are twice as likely to be inclusive in this field. there could be many reasons for this but it's worth considering that the inclusive problem and lack of trust actually may be related to the male chauvinism issue.Finally, that Anonymous and these types of communities will not have as much impact as l0pht, mod, lod, others... is seriously debatable!
Most of the older groups such as l0pht spent their time saying XYZ company sucks because their developers missed a bug in a product. Whereas anonymous spends its time saying XYZ Gov/Inc/Policy sucks and we should riot. Which one do you think should have more impact?Well said. It is always interesting to watch hackers age. When I read the article I felt that much of the angst was pining for the "old days" when things were better. But reminiscing always gets it wrong :-).
That said, I've been wondering of late about hacker spaces. I've been a member of Hacker Dojo now (Mountain View CA) for about 6 months and by and large when I am there it has a lot of people hanging out on the free WiFi and perhaps hacking but not a lot of interacting except with perhaps 1 or 2 close associates nearby. But in part it seems to have no purpose as hacking has had in the past. I'm trying to come up with ideas to change that.
Hacker spaces have definitely changed. In the 90s the one here was a crazy 24hr party, it's entire membership was anarchists with zero regard for laws which they considered only existed to control information. Somehow I managed amazing productivity yet was largely high out of my gourd with Skinny Puppy blasting in the background almost constantly. Everything was surprisingly well organized, we would all decide on something like we need 60 handsets to try to clone and we'd accomplish that by the end of the day. We need to code our own STS-like dialup chat board because we're not paying for a license. 25 of us would work on that until 6:00am the next morning and it'd be done even with the craziest of distractions going on, such as around 11pm a steady stream of local misfits would come in as we'd converted it into an all ages boozecan and defacto nightclub with a stupid amount of lights rigged up that were in hindsight absolutely frightening considering the terribad wiring job we hacked together. It looked like the video from Front242 - Operating Tracks but with more eye searing strobe lights.
Now the hacker space I go to is largely populated with professional developers and students so gone is the raging music, the drugs, the anarchy/activism, the close-knit community, the epic amount of crime and nobody knows each other. There's less women too, in the 90s I would say it was half and half with many girls actively participating. I can count on one hand the amount of female hackers I've seen at the new space. Even though our old space was drug fueled insanity more work seemed to get done. No group projects going on anymore, there's a few but it's usually something like making your bike glow in the dark and not hacking software just for the sake of hacking. Doesn't help that none of us have any spare time either, we are all too busy in careers/school to afford an all nighter hack session like back in the day. Barely any of us can even manage to coordinate a time when everybody can be in the same room for 5 mins for a meeting let alone work on any projects.
It has no purpose because there is no purpose.
I know that sounds like a tautology, but bear with me. Without a project to rally behind, no one is going to automatically form little collectives and bang out cool stuff.
Things are either driven by one person or they are driven by multiple people after one person convinces them to participate and cajoles them into action. Someone, somewhere, has to provide the projects and the purpose. They then have to relentlessly follow through.
Interesting observation. I was a member of Hacker Dojo but let my membership lapse because I simply wasn't going there often enough; I still do pop in a couple times a month to use it as a coworking space (paying for the $10/day wifi access, not the free one) but I can't quite tell what I get out of it.
Then again, I'm not sure what I expect to get out of it, nor what I really should be putting into it. There don't seem to be many opportunities to strike up conversations but it's possible (probable) I'm being too passive in seeking them out.
This is about the "other" hacking, that hacker dojo shuns.