Hacking Culture

AK 2100

Hacking Culture

• Hacking has never been just a technical activity

• Hacking is more about the imagination, the creative uses of technology

• Should see hacking as a complex subculture

• Media tends to focus on the manner in which computers are hacked

Hacking & the Media

Hacking & the Media

Anxiety

Basic cultural anxiety about both the complexity of technology and the contemporary culture’s reliance upon that technology

The Question of Hacking

• Technology should be considered a cultural phenomenon. Tells us something about human relationships

• To pose questions with respect to technology is to pose cultural and relational questions

• What is hacking? To answer this we must look at the cultural and relational forces that define the context in which hacking takes place

Origins

• Originally hackers were benign “computer geeks” • Hacker Ethic (Levy)

– Access to computers should be unlimited and total– All information should be free– Mistrust authority, promote decentralization– Hackers should be judged by their hacking– You can create art and beauty on a computer– Computers can change your life for the better

See also http://www.fiu.edu/~mizrachs/hackethic.html

Ethics

The "Hacker Ethic"Over many years at MIT, a "code of ethics" has evolved. This informal code is a self-enforced attitude that ensures that hacks will continue to be amusing and well-received both within and without MIT.

According to the "hacker ethic," a hack must:

* be safe * not damage anything * not damage anyone, either physically, mentally or emotionally * be funny, at least to most of the people who experience it

There is no way of enforcing this code, but anything that directly contradicts it will probably not be considered a "hack" by most of the MIT community.

Hackers 1960s

• A desire to create beauty with computers, to liberate information, to decentralize access to communication

• To the 1960s hacker, hacking meant rendering technology benign, making it less threatening and imposing

A Genealogy of Secrecy

Hackers negotiate the concept of secrecy that has evolved since WWII

The Enigma Machine

A Genealogy of Secrecy

• In the 60s secrecy meant the freedom to share code in the computer lab. A spirit of cooperation where everyone had the right to tinker with the work of others in order to improve it

• Roots in leftist political agenda that grew out of the 60s counterculture

Hacking the Industry

• Understanding the hacker requires some understanding of where, how and why the PC cam into being

• The Altair: the first PC. Cost 400 dollars and had to be built

• Sharing of information became one of the central tenets of the hacker ethic

• With commodification came competition to maintain market share. Suddenly things had to be kept secret.

The Hacker Imagination

• Hacker tradition grounded in sci fi.• Data as a social fabric, a medium of exchange• Information is now home for hackers and

secrecy of information is equivalent to confinement or prison

Declaration of Digital Independence

We, the computer-literate and technologically superior, in order to break the ignorant chains of those who hold us back, do hereby declare our freedom from those who control what they do not understand. We wish to no longer hear the cries of "pornography-superhighway" and "cyber-patrol". We reject the repulsive nonsense shoved down our throats by all forms of media telling of the dangers of piracy, pornography, and in general, free thought. There are no "cyber-molesters" we cannot stop as a people. If you educate your children like the good parent you should be, they should know what is right and what is wrong, and will be wise, young judges, with free thought and judgement. We cannot simply "block" what we find offensive, on the net, on bulletin boards, and as we all know, in real life. We must learn to deal with the "day to day inadequacies" of life, and we must not simply become mindless drones of those that fight to restrict freedom. We must fight even harder than they, and we must fight to stay free, or all right is lost. If it's not worth fighting for, then you have already been brainwashed. http://bse.die.ms/independece.html

War Games & similar films: demonstrate

anxiety about technology. Hacker

represented as dangerous. But also

characterized as a hero

War Games brought hacking into the public eye. Great impact of

hacking culture

War Games & similar films demonstrates

anxiety about technology. Hacker

represented as dangerous. But also

characterized as a hero

War Games brought hacking into the public eye. Great impact of

hacking culture

War Games & similar films demonstrates

anxiety about technology. Hacker

represented as dangerous. But also

characterized as a hero

War Games brought hacking into the public eye. Great impact of

hacking culture

Hackers of Today

• More dystopian• Today secrecy is equated with freedom• Hackers and hacking constitute a culture in

which the main concern is technology itself and society’s relationship to the concept of technology

Hackers of Today

• Hacking is about culture in two ways: a set of codes, norms, values and attitudes; the target of hacker’s activity is not machines, people or resources but the relationships among those things.

• As culture becomes dependent on certain types of technology, information becomes increasingly commodified. Commodification is the first step in re-valuing information in terms of secrecy

The Ubiquity of the PC

• Essential curiosity and ethos of hacking and hacker culture overwhelmed by the commercialisation of hacking and hacking culture

• White-hat hackers and black hat hackers• Script kiddies• True hack• Derivative hacks

http://zdnet.com.com/2100-11-502632.html?legacy=zdnn

http://www.time.com/time/europe/magazine/2000/0515/hackers.html

http://www.kevinmitnick.com/

This article argues that there is more to hacking than the mainstream media suggests. In other words, not all hackers are pathological extremists bent on world destruction and that the culture of hacking is quite complex and far ranging. With your group, discuss how hacking could be better understood. What are some of the positive effects of hacking, both in terms of approaching computer technology and as a general cultural attitude? Are there ideas, artists, individuals, values, social movements, etc. that you think embody some of the features of hacking, as represented by Jordan and Taylor?

Two related questions: why do you think that hacking is so demonized in mainstream media and society? How would you interpret some of the more destructive hackers out there (such as those that just released the so-called “Kama Sutra” worm)?

Discussion QuestionsA Sociology of Hackers by Tim Jordan and Paul Taylor