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The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

phrack.org

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Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#91

Post by motohagiography »

It's difficult to imagine a world before the internet, or even cell phones if you didn't experience it directly. There was distance, and there was "elsewhere." In 1986, the way you found people who shared your worldview if you were outside a narrow middle class mainstream was through music, or technology. When you listen to bands from the period and before, especially anything on the alternative vein, they were trying to create signals to find people like them.

The distance allowed for a counter-culture, where the lack of distance today means a counter-culture is too dangerous to tolerate.

If you had an IQ above a standard deviation, you were probably pretty alienated, and so you used taste in art, tech, and culture to find others like you. This manifesto was 3 years before before Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine. Ministry had just released "Twitch," into a pop culture dominated by hair metal, in a society where technology still meant muscle cars and mullets. Punk was truly dead, and the affects of new romantics and the me generation and yuppies were at peak decadence.

The Hacker Manifesto is an artifact of its time. I'm rather glad it sticks out, and that it can't be co-opted by our modern and enlightened hegemon. Sure, it's got more of a cringe factor now, but it represents something that was true then, and has remained so today: competence will always be a threat to complicity. There remain people who make, discover, derive, and invent, and they will necessarily disrupt. They are the only true progress. Manifestos rarely age well, but the courage they inspire and the work that results tends to set the trajectory of history.

I read this manifesto in 1993 and for better or worse, I can say I accomplished some things as a result.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#93

Post by rboyd »

jmts wrote: post #56
walrus01 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Man, I feel old now, the manifesto and similar documents to it pre-date the cheesy-as-hell movie by many years.

You're not old. You're elite!

Man I remember wanting to be elite more than anything. It always seemed like a binary function, you were either elite or you were a lamer.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#94

Post by heyoni »

johan_larson wrote: post #83

> We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. Anyone in the telecommunications industry care to speak to this? Because this guy sounds like a spoiled brat who doesn't realize that good things cost money. He is talking about the pre-internet landline network, an international communications system that reach…

I think the point is that the telephone was actually an older invention that was “relatively” cheap to maintain. The fact that it was a ubiquitous and well understood technology, also meant that fees should be lower since it was essentially in maintenance mode. And keep in mind that Bell being split for being a monopoly was likely in the writers mind too.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#96

Post by ALittleLight »

_wldu wrote: post #53

The part about hackers all being alike really resonates with me. I've felt this way for years, but have not heard others talk much about it. I've had the opportunity to work with young people from all over the world (many nationalities and cultures) who have very different backgrounds than I do and it's so neat to watch them write code and listen to them talk through issues. They think about problems just as I do. I…

That part made me think of Magic the Gathering. I played a lot of Magic for awhile. While traveling I'd visit random card shops, and I've played in a number of different and far flung cities. Every night, no matter the location, it's the same group of guys gathering around to play some cards. I find it quite comforting, almost magical, and archetypal.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#97

Post by tomrod »

YeGoblynQueenne wrote: post #67

>> Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Here's a thought. A smart person realises that everyone around them thinks they're smarter than everyone else around them, and that everyone can't be right at the same time, which must mean that most are wrong. Which in turn means that, to be the one person who is right to think they're smarter t…

Welcome to cognitive hierarchy theory!

Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_hierarchy_theory

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#100

Post by z3phyr »

krapp wrote: post #12

And then decades later, those hackers built the infrastructure for systems of surveillance and control that would have just been a wet dream for those "1950's technobrains," and modern hackers embrace racism and extremism rather than transcending them, and complain that the internet liberating humanity from the shackles of corporate information and communication control has just caused the normies to ruin its quirky…

The revolution never had much success?

What do you think is the hacker culture? Everything you hate about tech is post hacker culture. Also its purely about the hack value, making computers do what everyone thought was impossible before, and sharing it with those who appreciate it. That attitude surely have fizzled down. And that is simply the heart of hacker culture.

Being good person or bad person is totally tangential. You can be a good hacker, but maybe not the best person, or you can be a good hacker and absolutely nice.

EDIT: The scene is not actually dead. People are still doing magic with 8 bit computers and Amigas. The sky is the limit inside the box!

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