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How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

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Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#31

Post by gue5t »

kriro wrote: post #26
baseballmerpeak wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Go home, yuppies. The last few paragraphs bring it home: hacking is being subverted as a tool of the establishment and no longer, in common use, means working against the establishment.

I really don't like the link to "the profit fetish" in the last paragraph and the implicit undertone of profit being a bad thing. In fact I completely disagree and would call hacking (in the sense it is used in the article) a very direct expression of profit seeking. You change one state to another one that you prefer. If the costs to achieve this are less than the added value that's (economic) profit.

The point of being a hacker (in the traditional sense) is that your utility function is completely wack. You prefer to make the lights on the screen (and by proxy, the state of the registers) the way you envision than to have free time for hobbies intrinsically inbued with external relevance.

The prevalence of computers in modern commerce makes this easy to overlook. Hacking isn't about building things the rest of the world appreciates and understands--it's about mastery and appreciation of abstract systems.

Edit: to make myself completely clear, profit is inherently evil, c.f. the notion of selflessness.

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#32

Post by kazinator »

Summary:

1. Define what hacker means (prior to the yuppie gentrification), for numerous paragraphs. Bulk of article.

2. Big drop G paragraph: point actually starts here. (Just scroll down until you see a big G).

3. Fizzle on about gentrification of hacking, sort of making a point.

4. Send yuppies home.

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#33

Post by VonGuard »

rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #30

When I realized that the kids of the old money elite began to see Silicon Valley, not Wall Street, as the means to big money, I decided I could never go back. The elitists came to Northern California - a vanguard of social liberalism, student protest, and most importantly communitarianism - and brought their elitism with them. Northern California still exists in the nostalgic hippie image of the 60s, but it's compart…

Completely agree. There's currently a Kickstarter to build a wall around SF to keep the Burners from coming back after Burning Man. Frankly, though, my first thought upon seeing it was "Geez, the Burners are the only people left in SF who are really SF-ish and weird anymore.

SF has changed. It's becoming Manhattan West.

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#34

Post by irl_zebra »

I have to say, I really enjoyed how they placed their newsletter signup. I actively rebel (maybe that's the hacker ethos per this article, haha) against the ones that have a giant popup and often put totally incorrect information just because I'm so annoyed. This one has the signup unobtrusively in the middle of the article a little ways down. Thus, if you found the article interesting enough to keep reading, you came across the newsletter signup embedded unobtrusively. I signed up for a newsletter from a website/blog for the first time in a long time.

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#36

Post by gluelogic »

clavalle wrote: post #17

You know what's cool? Ignoring what other people think is cool. Who cares if 'yuppies' 'gentrify' hacking. You neither have to stop doing what you like because groups you don't care for have noticed nor do you have to waste energy and time and fight against them for doing so. Do what you want to do regardless. That is the answer to the author's questions. If you are a hacker, or artist or music lover or anything else…

> Ignoring what other people think is cool.

In the end, it really isn't though.

It is a bad thing when subcultures are overrun by people who did not come to it organically. What I mean by that is at a certain point, members of a subculture gain a perceived glamour, which incentivizes outsiders to come in for superficial reasons. This dilutes the subculture's original ethos, and if it continues long enough it totally replaces it.

A perfect example of this is the Indie rock of 15 years ago. That culture has completely been obliterated and replaced by a microcosm of corporate pop music. Almost anyone I speak to knows what Indie is now. One would struggle to accurately refer to it as a subculture today. The problem is not a mere increase in population, but a dilution of the core values that initially caused people to gravitate to that scene.

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#37

Post by msandford »

VonGuard wrote: post #33
rm_-rf_slash wrote: post #30

When I realized that the kids of the old money elite began to see Silicon Valley, not Wall Street, as the means to big money, I decided I could never go back. The elitists came to Northern California - a vanguard of social liberalism, student protest, and most importantly communitarianism - and brought their elitism with them. Northern California still exists in the nostalgic hippie image of the 60s, but it's compart…

Completely agree. There's currently a Kickstarter to build a wall around SF to keep the Burners from coming back after Burning Man. Frankly, though, my first thought upon seeing it was "Geez, the Burners are the only people left in SF who are really SF-ish and weird anymore. SF has changed. It's becoming Manhattan West.

> SF has changed. It's becoming Manhattan West.

That feels about right. Except that it's nowhere near as tall.

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#38

Post by [deleted] »

gambler wrote: post #29

This reads like a typical cultural critique article. Long text, contrived definitions, lack of overall insights into the subject. At least I didn't see anything that would make go "ah, I never thought of that". It's mostly word games. Even though many people try to draw parallels between hackers who creatively modify systems and hackers who break into systems, there is little overlap these days, except, maybe some co…

[deleted]

Re: How yuppies hacked the hacker ethos

#39

Post by anthony_d »

emodendroket wrote: post #7
humbleMouse wrote: post #4

Don't really like this article, the writing is embellished and the thesis unclear.

The thesis is that, through a process similar to gentrification of ethnic neighborhoods, the term "hacker" and the culture it represents has been replaced with a shallow facsimile that's more palatable to moneyed interests. Not sure how you missed it.

He probably missed it because it was long winded and poorly articulated.
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