Review of Himanen's The Hacker Ethic

If you are reading this you know that computers are a rather indispensable part of the human condition for those of us in the western world. Presumably it will be the same for everyone, everywhere, eventually.

The Hacker Ethic: A Radical Approach to the Philosophy of Business by Pekka Himanen, is a statement of the values embodied by those who literally made the computer happen. The ethic is revolutionary and cannot easily be classified given the existing paradigms of social, political, and ethical philosophy.

(There is a cute introduction by Linus Torvalds, and a rather odd epilogue by Manuel Castells which is filled with lots of sociological gobbledygook that I am pretty sure would be false if it were written such that people could comprehend it.)

The book starts with an analysis of the protestant work ethic and compares it to the "passionate life", The protestant ethic is about work and making work a virtue in and of itself. In the "passionate" work ethic (ie, the Hacker work ethic) work is not an ends, it is not really a means either, it should be something enjoyable.

The Hacker ethic is contrasted next with the bizarre 9-5 lifestyle where the goal is to just be somewhere from 9 to 5. The hacker ethic is more concerned with accomplishments that occur over a long time. The whole corporate time structure is unsuitable to the achievements that hackers have made.

When it comes to money it seems that there are various hacker models of how one ought to feel. Various models are proposed in the book and there is no one that is taken as authoritative. The models vary from simple capitalist to get rich quick and become a philanthropist to the downright socialist.

Models of hacker learning are then outlined. The build-up of knowledge and the model for study is elaborated. There is also a social model that can be adapted from this. (I wish he would have talked more about this. You can see where he is going with the "open resource" suggestion, but it holds so much promise that it is worth fleshing out.)

Some of the staples of the hacker ethic, some of the hacker virtues, so to speak are addressed. Namely privacy and free speech are touted, rightfully so, as the cornerstones of what hackers need to survive, in the same way that humanity does.

The hacker ethic of personal development is addressed too.

Somewhere in the end there is a cute interlude as to what the world would have looked like if God had ben God inc, instead of the Hacker God, who just got off his but and created the world.

The book is full of references to Plato and Church theologians. There is a huge project of detailing the protestant ethic and contrasting it with hacker ethic.

It is really a wonderful statement of what the hacker lifestyle embodies. Hackers are a rather unique breed of people, but they ought not be. As a society, most of us are beyond the point where we need to work and structure our lives in a way that makes work a pure good. Many of us, especially those who work for companies can find ways of restructuring our lives so that we are happier living it. There is a strange need to think that we need to conform to the mold or our jobs will not get done. For most of us there is little need to coordinate our physical presence in the workplace all the time to achieve the fulfillment of our goals. There is little need for the types of regulation that goes on to meet the standards we have for the good life. Everyone should be a hacker. They will be happier. (Remember: a hacker need not be a computer hacker.)

The world of hacking is actually interesting in that it does seem like it is onne of the few places where the Anarchist utopias can really happen. In the Alexander Goldman and Michael Bakhunin-style anarchism there is no state control and everyone produced whatever they wanted and donated it all to the common pot from which all took freely. While this sounds ridiculous in the real world, in the world of information it makes a lot of sense and even ends up working. How? Well there is a system of rewards that people are all after, namely peer recognition. So it is not like good work and creativity go unnoticed. And, unlike real goods, when you give away information you don't have any less of it. So while you can't eat information, there is a start of a paradigm to work with here.

The hacker revolution was ideology-driven and ought to stay that way. (Gassett would approve, no doubt.)

Gibson no doubt would worry that worry that if it did not exist, and people went corporate too quickly then the upward spiral of technological improvement would stop. I suspect that we are seeing the first inklings of that now. (The tell is that Japan seems to be outstripping the US technologywise. Little creativity comes from Japan, only refinement of US technology. When the refinements are ahead of the innovations it says that creativity is in a lull.)

All in all though the book is an important statement of the hacker ethic. It deserves to be widely read and thought about, by the general public, sociologists, and corporations, and philosophers.

A few criticisms though, after all the hype about the ethics of open source there is still a whole copyright page which makes sure that the book itself is not "open sourced". Very disturbing.

(On the technical side, I wish the footnotes were on the page instead of in the back, and there is no index, which is annoying. )