Hackers: The Misunderstood Heroes of the IT Revolution
When most people think of Hacking, they think of illegal activity, identity theft, security breaches and general malaise. Many people believe that all hackers are criminals that should be locked away in order to preserve the integrity and security of the web.
This picture is both hilarious and fitting as a representation of what many people think hackers are--little Ukrainian guys hunched over the computer all day trying to steal credit card numbers.
However, this is not the right picture to paint. Even some of the hackers that are technically involved in illegal activities are involved for the greater good of mankind. Hackers in general, should be regarded as friend rather than foe and should be praised for what their culture has brought the IT world. Further, my blog and my approach to the internet is an attempt to respect and uphold the hacking culture.
In her article titled "Hackers", which is excerpted from her book Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking, author E. Gabriella Coleman defines a hacker as "a technologist with a penchant for computing" (Coleman 2012, 1).
Hackers are viewed as people who take away from the online experience for the rest of us. The reason for this is that, historically, hackers have played a number of different roles--some of them have been good, and some of them have been bad. However, society tends to focus on the negatives more than the positives, so hackers are notorious for their actions, rather than praised for them.
Here is a video about Anonymous, which I will talk about more later. Anonymous is a leaderless hacking collective that essentially acts as a watchdog for democratic society. This rare 20 minute documentary provides a deeper look into what exactly Anonymous is, how hacking is used for political activism today, how that came to be and what Anonymous is doing to use hacking skills to stop corruption and protect the citizens of the world from the widespread lack of accountability that we see in powerful institutions.
Using hacking as a tool for political activism is something that needs to be looked at in a positive light. We cannot rely on democratic governments to protect us from themselves. That is one thing Anonymous is surely correct about.
This article from Bloomberg News shows the "dark side" of hacking. Hackers in San Francisco decided to attack ATMs in order to steal the cash inside of them--digitally. According to the article, "within two hours, $9 million was withdrawn from the automated teller machines in 46 machines." This shows exactly how much power these people, who are largely incredibly intelligent, have. Hacking prowess is thankfully not always used for immoral things like this.
Hackers are known for writing viruses as well. Malicious code is all over the internet and that is why cyber security is becoming such a massively important industry. People who are educated in computer science programs at university's are often, despite what you might think, not the best people out there to design cyber-security systems. Rather, hackers are. Hackers are often hired by companies or institutions that they hack into to redesign their cyber-security systems. Sometimes this is a way for hackers to avoid being prosecuted for their crimes, but it is not a bad trade off if you ask me.
This TED talk is about why we should hire hackers, rather than throw them in jail and waste their rare skills. Speaker and journalist Misha Glenny explains that some of these brilliant cyber criminals were led down the wrong path as young adults and never had the chance to fully develop their skills or use them for the greater good. However, their skills are invaluable and should be utilized by society. I think that Anonymous encourages that sort of thing, but in a decentralized way.
Hackers have given a lot more to the world wide web than they have taken away. For one thing, they widely agree that the the best web is a web that is free and open, uncensored, uncontrolled, decentralized and unmonitored. This "hacker philosophy" has manifested itself in the mainstream as society begins to understand the value in their point of view.
Coleman's article defines some of the values that hackers typically uphold. These values, according to her article, include but are certainly not limited to:
"Privacy"
"Freedom
"Access"
One manifestation would be Wikipedia and the widespread success and credibility the site has reached.
Chapter 1 of Andrew Lih's book The Wikipedia Revolution explains that:
The success of Wikipedia is based on simple principles that appear as a radically new phenomena but in fact extend the long tradition of a "hacker ethos" to a whole new generation of Internet users. Wikipedia built on this hacker culture to establish its principles of making an encyclopedia that is free, open, neutral, timely and social (Lih 2009, 5).
Those who developed Wikipedia, which even the most casual internet user knows about today, built the site on these guidelines, which produced unexpectedly positive results for the greater web.There is a higher level of transparency on Wikipedia that resulted from the ideals of the hackers who created it. Lih supports this claim when he writes:
Each article has a complete chronological log of every change(anonymous ones too) ever made, back to its point of creation. The actions of each user are meticulously recorded and tracked in the system and can be observed by anyone else. This feature of "inspectability" is from the computer programming field, where revisions and decisions are tracked for technical quality (Lih 2009, 6).
Wikipedia is an improvement on the Public Sphere, an idea coined by German sociologist/philosophy Jurgen Habermas, and it fits in nicely with the requirements he laid out for a functioning public sphere.
Jurgen Habermas
The public sphere can be defined as an area of social life where people can come together to freely discuss and identify societal problems, and through that discussion possibly take political action.
The image below shows what the public sphere consists of and how the inner organs of the public sphere function and work together.
In order for the public sphere to truly be a functioning public sphere, three things must be true:
There must be a disregard of members' statuses
The matters discussed shall be in the "domain of common concern"
There shall be inclusivity, access to the public sphere is guaranteed for all
These three tenants are especially true for Wikipedia. Any person can edit a page and get involved in the conversation. It does not matter who you are--you can even edit a page anonymously. While I believe the public sphere is constantly improving and becoming more open, Wikipedia is a gigantic step in the right direction. The intellectual and societal topics defined and explored on Wikipedia are not reserved for the elites in society to know about. Rather, they are available to anyone with an internet connect, whether it be a steel worker or a rocket scientist. That is truly an example of how Wikipedia disregards the status of its users, which relates back to hacking culture. Hackers do not judge each other based on background or whether or not someone has a formal college degree. Instead, hackers are judged on their ability to add to the hacking conversation, sort of like users of Wikipedia.
This leads me to my final point, and really the heart of this project:
This music blog, my philosophy on blogging and my general approach are completely based off of the tenants and guidelines of hacking culture. I was able to make an account and start broadcasting my opinion across the web--to absolutely anyone in the world with internet access. The difference between blogging and Wikipedia is that on a blog, you can be far more opinionated and facts are not checked as often.
Not only that, but the music that I post on my blog is all free and open. This blog follows hacker culture and like Wikipedia, is public sphere friendly.
This is Soundcloud, a free music website that allows you to copy its embed code and use it on any other website you choose. Soundcloud is a free and legal service. I embedded a Soundcloud widget in my most recent post because there is no logical reason why one should have to pay to hear this music that is already being offered for free. I simply took advantage of Soundcloud's willingness to share and also, the musicians willingness to share.
I also installed discus, which allows anyone who reads any of my blog posts to comment and get involved in the conversation.
I have always been against censorship of any kind, so even if someone happened to post a negative comment I would not delete it, although I am the administrator of the site.
Tumblr, in general, is a good way for people interested in niche political, social or cultural topics to broadcast their opinions to a large audience. This is something that was not previously able to happen and is evidence that access is truly guaranteed to all. Everything that I blog about is free and open. Also, every post is full of links to other websites that have even more information about things that I blog about. This fits into hacking culture as well--that information should be available to everyone for free and linked in a logical manner.
I never placed a link to Encarta or Encyclopedia Britannia, instead, I link to Wikipedia because it is a free service. To use either of the other encyclopedias I mentioned, one would have to create an account, log in and pay for the service. That goes against the hacking culture that I try to support and be a part of through the stylistic approach I take when I write my blog posts.
The internet has caused the music industry to reinvent itself. In the early 2000s, bands like Metallica were up in arms about Napster and the threat that P2P file sharing posed to musicians everywhere who were trying to profit off of their music. After a long and rocky battle, which is still going on, but mostly between record companies and torrent website founders like those who founded The Pirate Bay, the most popular torrent website in the world, the internet finally won. Musicians had to make their music free, open and shareable online and find other ways to profit than simply selling albums
Spotify is an example of how music has become free open and shareable.
An even more free music service that I have also linked to is www.archive.org, which has endless amount of music that is not only free to listen to, but is also free of any copyright claims. The picture above is a screenshot of the audio archive which anyone can access.
Music itself is predicated on hacking culture now. Music is for the first time, free and open, which fits in with the hacking culture, just like this blog and the greater blogging community. Music has become like all the information on the internet in that it is completely free and access is guaranteed for all. Music is now a part of the public sphere, and that is something profound if you ask me.
Works Cited
Coleman, E. Gabriella. Coding freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
Habermas, Jurgen. "The Public Sphere: An Encyclopedia Article." New German Critique 3 (1963): 49-55.
Ivanov, Georgie. "What is Anonymous? Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About the Shadowy Internet Group." Policy Mic, February 13, 2013. http://www.policymic.com/articles/23922/anonymous-everything-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-shadowy-internet-group (accessed May 7, 2013).
Lih, Andrew. The Wikipedia Revolution: How a Bunch of Nobodies Created the World's Greatest Encyclopedia. New York: Hyperion, 2009.