Recently I reread 'Programming is Forgetting: Toward a New Hacker Ethic' by A. Parrish as it had come up in conversation with peers. Reading it now there are some fairly large problems with the article which I feel need addressing.
Firstly I want to frame the discussion by saying that the second half of the article, which deals with linguistics, systems thinking and general semantics is good stuff. There are valuable points there which we as an industry could well pay more attention to. The content of the first half of the article however is a condemnation of Steven Levy's 1984 book, 'Hackers : heroes of the computer revolution'.
The author in using Levy's book as a definition of Hacking and hacker culture sets up a straw man and falls victim to their own arguments of not succumbing to cognitive bias and cultural stereotyping. Levy's treatise, written in the era of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan is full of personal bias, and the bias of the time. Taking a quick look at this review of Levy's book in PC Magazine from 1985 will give you a sense of how very different things were then. The first generation of hackers described in Levy's book existed in a time before the equal pay act, or the civil rights act. Computers were things that costed millions of dollars then and were owned by the military, governments and giant corporations.
Levy himself is overly fond of the 'Boys Own Annual' style storytelling, and this bias makes itself apparent in his choice of who to write about and which tales get included in the 'Biggles' bumper annual of hacker stories' that the book represents. This lends a particular cast to those stories, and to assert that Levy's treatise on hackerdom is authoritative is particularly dubious. Nevertheless, let us look at Levy's understanding of what the hacker ethic supposedly is, which is in broad agreement with items such as the Jargon file and the Hacker Manifesto.
The 'hacker ethic' according to Levy:
- Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
- All information should be free.
- Mistrust authority—promote decentralisation.
- Hackers should be judged by their hacking, 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.
Let's look at the first four of these:
It is easy to forget that we have this today: ubiquitous smartphones, tablets, laptops and desktops abound. Remember that the Personal Computer (PC) was a product of the late 70's, and had not yet been invented when the stories in Levy's book occurred. It is difficult for us to imagine how impressive a computer must have been to a young nerdy college student in those early days, it might perhaps be like being on the bridge of the star-ship Enterprise today, they would have no experience to compare. Once they had understood the potential to be unlocked within, they intuited that the future would only be unlocked by free access. Mainframes of the period were very rare, and very expensive; because of this they were guarded by the edifices of power and privilege, things anathema to the hacker culture. This is not about 'me', this is about freedom from oppression, removing the gatekeepers and allowing everyone the opportunity to join a new world of opportunity.
It is easy for us to forget in our current age of pervasive FOSS that back in those days simple tools like editors were expensive pieces of software hidden behind copyright and licensing agreements that excluded all but the very wealthy.
I think given the events playing out in today's world the prophetic nature of this requires little discussion.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race or position
This is a core part of what constitutes hacker culture, and one of its most equitable features. If I wrote the same today I might be tempted to write a more inclusive list of attributes that should be ignored, but I think it's better not to name any and be utterly clear that judgement or discrimination based upon physical attributes or personal preferences or beliefs have no place in the hacker culture. Who you are is not important, what you do is.
Parrish then suggests that we rewrite these first four principals as follows:
Who gets to use what I make? Who am I leaving out? How does what I make facilitate or hinder access?
This is all about 'me' and what I am doing. Parrish fails to notice that the first line of Levy's hacker ethic isn't about the hacker at all, it is about removing authority and privilege as the gatekeepers to computing. Parrish fails to see this because they view the world through their current lens rather than the lens of Levy's writing or the people they wrote about. Parrish's questions themselves are reasonable ones, but they don't replace the original, because they don't ensure equitable access for all.
What data am I using? Whose labour produced it and what biases and assumptions are built into it? Why choose this particular phenomenon for digitisation or transcription? And what do the data leave out?
Again this is all about 'me' and what I am doing. Parrish views this through the lens of the current world, not the time of writing; a world of abundance in which data is pervasive and accessible, and in which free software exists for almost any conceivable desire. The line in Levy's ethics that asserts that 'information should be free' is not about the data I consume or produce, it is about being able to afford anything at all. In the 70's a UNIX OS license could cost more than $20,000. Simple tools like editors, compilers and mail clients that we take for granted today were out of reach of the vast majority economically.
Our modern world is replete with free information (Wikipedia, OpenData), free operating systems (Linux, FreeBSD), free applications (Open Source) and even free services. Due to the likes of Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds amongst a multitude of others the freedom that the second line of the hacker ethic aspires to has been achieved. Again Parrish's questions are valid and thought provoking, but they are the product of a modern age, they do not invalidate the freedoms that Parrish seems to want to replace.
What systems of authority am I enacting through what I make? What systems of support do I rely on? How does what I make support other people?
Again this is all 'me'. It is about what things I do, not what is happening in the world around me. These may be worthy questions, but they don't replace the central ideology of the third ethic: "mistrust authority, promote decentralisation". The times that Levy was writing about, the rise of Hippies and 60's counter-culture were due to pervasive mistrust in the government and authorities of the period due to things like the Vietnam war and the Watergate scandal. It was right and prudent to mistrust authority, and I would argue still is.
The whole reason that we have a democracy is specifically this reason, that a decentralisation of authority away from a central figure (a monarch) is the only way to ensure that that central power is not abused. Every time we encounter centralised authority we see an abuse of that power, Facebook is a shining example of that in modern times. Again, whilst Parrish's questions are meaningful, they do not replace the imperative of the third ethic, and in replacing it they discard the most important point: "promote decentralisation".
What kind of community am I assuming? What community do I invite through what I make? How are my own personal values reflected in what I make?
These questions are all about what is outside of me, my community, my creations. The fourth of Levy's ethics is a call to remove prejudice of all forms, which Parrish's replacement fails to address. I would dearly like to say that we live in a world without prejudice, and that Parrish's current lens assumes a pervasive trend of people to judge others by their actions rather than their race, colour, gender or beliefs, but current world events show that this is sadly and very apparently not the case.
I personally find Parrish's comments tone deaf, even taking into account their time of writing in 2016, and find that now more than ever the call to judge others by their actions and not their appearance, position or privilege is more important now than ever before.
In conclusion, even though Parrish's questions have merit, they are questions rather than imperatives, they do not express beliefs, they cannot replace values. I find the values of equal access for all, freedom from impositions, decentralising control and treating everyone equally are as valid today as they were in 1984.