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The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

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Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#61

Post by sevensor »

lubujackson wrote: post #52
sevensor wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. Well sure, but let's not discount the historical value of its angsty naïveté. This is an important part of our cultural history -- it helps explain the peculiar contradiction that many of us still feel a sense of persecution even as working in technology has become both luc…

Computing in general started with such an idealistic, academic mindset. It's important to remember that the "hacker mindset" was really a call to return to that original approach where people would literally hack together on a computer, explore its limits and do it simply for the thrill. By the 80s, there was a business/professionalism that was eating away at that early approach and the "manifesto" is almost a straig…

I see where you're coming from, but this is an oversimplification. A lot of the early work on and thinking about computers was about the possibility of top-down social control. This features explicitly in Weiner's Cybernetics and at least implicitly in Von Neumann and Morgenstern's Theory of Games and Economic Behavior. (The Soviets latched onto the same idea and tried to build a central-planning computer network.) The "hacking" ethic was really part of the counterculture, and like the counterculture, it ultimately dissolved into the mainstream.

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#63

Post by qwertyuiop924 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #58
qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough, but how about GPSD?

The fact that GPSD is the best thing you can come up with that he wrote pretty much proves my point, doesn't it? If that's all it takes to brand yourself a "hacker", in spite of executing a vicious multi-decade jihad against Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, then being a "hacker" doesn't mean anything. I'd like to think that vitriolically disagreeing with the part of the Hacker Manifesto that says "W…

You know, I think you're right. But the thing is "without religious bias." We can say ESR isn't a hacker because his code's not good enough, and having stated your case, I'd agree, but saying he's not a hacker because he doesn't agree with us ideologically is undermining our own ideology.

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#64

Post by sevensor »

jff wrote: post #43
objectiveariel wrote: post #6

To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. It's a poor "manifesto" too. What exactly are the aims of The Hacker? "Exploring", "Outsmarting you", and "judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like". Platitudes, really, if you set aside the emotional outbursts surrounding them. The Jargon File offer…

In my opinion, the Jargon File is a fun look back at historical hacker lifestyles, but it's also a microcosm of a very few schools in the 60s and 70s. Teenagers have a bad habit of reading the Jargon File and thinking that's how they MUST behave to be a hacker--I did it, to my embarrassment, and a trip to Defcon or most any freshman CS course will find others doing the same. You don't have to start saying "grok" to b…

A lot of people have adopted "grok" without understanding its subversive connotations. The shade of Robert Heinlein is laughing at us all.

Edit: just checked the Jargon File on "grok," and it mentions neither sexual congress nor ritual cannibalism. I think ESR may be chuckling as well.

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#65

Post by igamer »

loydb wrote: post #13
objectiveariel wrote: post #6

To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. It's a poor "manifesto" too. What exactly are the aims of The Hacker? "Exploring", "Outsmarting you", and "judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like". Platitudes, really, if you set aside the emotional outbursts surrounding them. The Jargon File offer…

To be fair, I was pretty damn angsty at the time :) Always exciting to see this pop up someplace new. It's being translated into Polish for a textbook this year as well.

Sup bdrop.

-Remagi

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#66

Post by DonHopkins »

qwertyuiop924 wrote: post #63
DonHopkins wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The fact that GPSD is the best thing you can come up with that he wrote pretty much proves my point, doesn't it? If that's all it takes to brand yourself a "hacker", in spite of executing a vicious multi-decade jihad against Richard Stallman and the Free Software Foundation, then being a "hacker" doesn't mean anything. I'd like to think that vitriolically disagreeing with the part of the Hacker Manifesto that says "W…

You know, I think you're right. But the thing is "without religious bias." We can say ESR isn't a hacker because his code's not good enough, and having stated your case, I'd agree, but saying he's not a hacker because he doesn't agree with us ideologically is undermining our own ideology.

Except that he's made a career of trying to pose as a hacker, define what a hacker is, tell people how to become a hacker, viciously attack the person, the philosophy and the life's work of one of the world's leading and most respected, influential and successful (if not quirky) hackers, and even hijack and distort the definition of the very words in the hacker's dictionary to reflect his own extremist political ideology, which most certainly does not align with the non-bigoted ideology in the Hacker's Manifesto that we're discussing.

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#68

Post by emidln »

jff wrote: post #43
objectiveariel wrote: post #6

To me, this manifesto has little more than historical value. It's more an expression of generic adolescent angst rather than of hacker culture. It's a poor "manifesto" too. What exactly are the aims of The Hacker? "Exploring", "Outsmarting you", and "judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like". Platitudes, really, if you set aside the emotional outbursts surrounding them. The Jargon File offer…

In my opinion, the Jargon File is a fun look back at historical hacker lifestyles, but it's also a microcosm of a very few schools in the 60s and 70s. Teenagers have a bad habit of reading the Jargon File and thinking that's how they MUST behave to be a hacker--I did it, to my embarrassment, and a trip to Defcon or most any freshman CS course will find others doing the same. You don't have to start saying "grok" to b…

> adopt the idiotic "-p convention" which doesn't even really exist in Lisp any more.

Do you have a better way of signaling to the reader that a function is a predicate? I don't write a ton of Common Lisp, but I do still see quite of a bit of foop when I read Common Lisp. Possible that most of the code I'm reading was written when this was still a thing though...

I think the only reason this doesn't exist in Clojure (which is the lisp I used the most) is that ? is a valid identifier. Similarly Scheme includes ? as a valid identifier (at least R5RS as implemented by Chicken).

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#69

Post by 0981239128 »

DonHopkins wrote: post #60
angersock wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You cite a bunch of people echochambering how much of a big, bad racist ESR is and call him names. The two direct quotes from him make policy points about drama from employees belonging to a group known for same and about anti-racism being used as a motivation for handwaving what he claims is a valid demographic observation. Even if you don't agree with his (nutzo!) politics you should refrain from repeating sloppy a…

Maybe I've been observing him for longer and more closely than you have. Using the word "thug" in a conversation about street fighters is one thing. But using it to viciously attack people in the open source community who take offense at an idiotic click-bait essay entitled "Blacks are Lazy" that you happen to agree with is something else entirely. With dog whistles, context matters. You have read the essay, haven't…

I'm a bit confused about what you're trying to achieve here.

Out of curiosity I just headed over to ESR's blog. The thing that stands out most is that 95% of the commenters there are uninformed nutcases (and I mean this literally).

On the other hand you seem to cherry pick some incidents and exaggerate/misrepresent the facts. Today is the first time ever that I've heard the claim that "thug" has the "n-word" connotation.

You are repeatedly mentioning this blog post:

http://blog.russnelson.com/economics/blacks-are-lazy.html

While I think it's superfluous and irrelevant, I don't see nearly and kind of conclusion there that you are drawing here.

Re: The Hacker's Manifesto (1986)

#70

Post by jff »

emidln wrote: post #68
jff wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my opinion, the Jargon File is a fun look back at historical hacker lifestyles, but it's also a microcosm of a very few schools in the 60s and 70s. Teenagers have a bad habit of reading the Jargon File and thinking that's how they MUST behave to be a hacker--I did it, to my embarrassment, and a trip to Defcon or most any freshman CS course will find others doing the same. You don't have to start saying "grok" to b…

> adopt the idiotic "-p convention" which doesn't even really exist in Lisp any more. Do you have a better way of signaling to the reader that a function is a predicate? I don't write a ton of Common Lisp, but I do still see quite of a bit of foop when I read Common Lisp. Possible that most of the code I'm reading was written when this was still a thing though... I think the only reason this doesn't exist in Clojure…

You may be right, maybe I've just only looked at Scheme lately and thought "?" had migrated to Common Lisp.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/Groups/AI/html/cltl/clm/node188.html seems to indicate that you could use ? in a common lisp function name, though.

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