The Values of the Hacker Ethic

The Values of the Hacker Ethic
This is a summary of the book "The Hacker Ethic" by Pekka Himanen. It is highly encouraged to read the original book and support the Author.

The hackers' "Jargon File", compiled collectively on the Net, defines them as people who "program enthusiastically" and who believe that "information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible." The hacker mind-set is not confined to this software-hacker culture.  There are people who apply the hacker attitude to other things, like electronics or music — actually, you can find it at the highest levels of any science or art.  

There is another group of people who loudly call themselves hackers, but aren't.  These are people who get a kick out of breaking into computers and phreaking the phone system. Real hackers call these people ‘crackers’ and want nothing to do with them.  Real hackers mostly think crackers are lazy, irresponsible, and not very bright, and object that being able to break security doesn't make you a hacker any more than being able to hot wire cars makes you an automotive engineer.  Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word ‘hacker’ to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end.

The basic difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.

It is an interesting fact that the best known symbols of our time–the Net, the personal computer, and software such as Linux operating system–were actually developed not by enterprises or governments but were created primarily by some enthusiastic individuals who just started to realize their ideas with other like-minded individuals working in a free rhythm. Himanen defines the values of hacker ethic, that enabled such innovations, as follows:

  1. Passion: Passion is some intrinsically interesting pursuit that energizes the hacker and contains joy in its realization. For hackers, passion describes the general tenor of their activity, though its fulfillment may not be sheer joyful play in all its aspects. Eric S. Raymond says, "Being a hacker is lots of fun that takes a lot of effort." Such effort is needed in the creation of anything even just a little bit greater. If need be, hackers are also ready for the less interesting parts necessary for the creation of the whole. However, the meaningfulness of the whole gives even its more boring aspects worth. There's a difference between being permanently joyless and having found a passion in life, for the realization of which one is also willing to take on less joyous but nonetheless necessary parts.  
  2. Freedom: Hackers do not organize their lives in terms of a routined and continuously optimized workday but in terms of dynamic flow between creative work and life's other passions. The Protestant Ethic clearly distinguishes work and play. It delegates work to the weekdays (i.e. Friday) and leisure to the weekends (i.e. Sunday). However, recent technology has optimized people's usage of time to the extent that they regiment both work and leisure time. In Himanen’s terms, the "Fridayization of Sunday" has left workers without space to enjoy anything for its intrinsic value. Hackers subvert this trend with the "Sundayization of Friday"—they optimize time to allow for playfulness. This optimization "should lead to a life for human beings that is less machinelike—less optimized and routine". Under the Protestant Ethic, people work as a means to an end of making profit; hackers work as the end itself.
  3. Social worth: Hackers do not see money as a value in itself but motivate their activity with the goals of social worth and openness. These hackers want to realize their passion together with others, and they want to create something valuable to the community and be recognized for that by their peers. And they allow the results of their creativity to be used, developed, and tested by anyone so that everyone can learn from one another.
  4. Openness: Hackers embrace an open information model and understand that collective knowledge and innovations increase when everyone has equal access to information. Even though much of the technological development of our information age has been done with traditional capitalism and governmental projects, a significant part of it–including the Internet and the personal computer–would not exist without hackers who just gave their creations to others. It also deals with facilitating access to information and to computing resources. It has addressed ideas such as freedom of expression on the Net, and access to the Net for all.
  5. Activity: Activity in this context involves complete freedom of expression in action, privacy to protect the creation of an individual lifestyle, and a rejection of passive receptiveness in favor of active pursuit of one's passion. Hackers value freedom of expression, privacy, and self-activity. Freedom of expression enables individuals to actively participate in society by letting them share different viewpoints. Surveillance encourages people to live a certain way. Privacy secures one’s activity in creating a personal lifestyle.
  6. Caring: Caring here means concern for others as an end for itself and the desire to rid the network society of the survival mentality. This includes the goal of getting everybody to participate in the network and to benefit from it, to feel responsible for longer-term consequences of the network society, and to directly help those who have been left on the margins for survival to help them move to a more dignified existence.
  7. Creativity: It is the imaginative use of one's own abilities, the surprising continuous surpassing of oneself, and the giving to the world of a genuinely valuable new contribution—it encompasses all components of the hacker ethic. This value is paramount; professionals who honor it are "true heroes" who embrace hackerism in the fullest sense of the word.

The hacker ethic provides a lens through which people can analyze professionals. A person can embody some or all values of the hacker ethic.

Similarly, the hacker ethics, as defined by Chaos Computer Club, Europe's largest hacker community, are very similar to the ones described by Himanen, are as follows:

  • Access to computers - and anything which might teach you something about the way the world really works - should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative!
  • All information should be free.
  • Mistrust authority - promote decentralization.
  • Hackers should be judged by their acting, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position.
  • You can create art and beauty on a computer.
  • Computers can change your life for the better.
  • Don't litter other people's data.
  • Make public data available, protect private data.

Happy hacking!