H as in Heroes, who needs the Hackers? - week 12

Romantic and somehow postmodern, the Hacker figure, as emerged in this week reading topic, is a force for good. Those fascinating creatures, on one hand, are enormously narcissistic and in love whit themself and their life on the other hand they are not selfish or greedy for money.

The hacker’s suspicious attitude when comes to authority puts them on the frontline when comes to fight against powerful villains, and just as Robin Hood they do not seek enormous riches for themself; but don’t take this wrong, they don’t mind at all to be wealthy they just don’t have money as the main and final goal of their actions. This last aspect may cause them to not be understood by our economic-centric societies were the most skilled are supposed to mostly seek first for money, then for fame; real hackers may not care about the first and adverse the second.

In certain countries to be a hacker is a crime by itself, even for someone to claim himself to be one can put him in very serious trouble, this is not only because of the potential those people have to commit actual crimes, it comes from a widespread misunderstanding and a general ignorance of what genuine hackerdom really is.

Of course hackers are expert of their fields, coding, it, computer sciences and so on… and this in the new digital era makes them the fittest to be. Even more their approach to education and “professional recognition” is extremely meritocratic, disintermediated and non-discriminatory, this makes them very comfortable in a stage where concepts like “continuous learning”, “peer-recognition” and “hands-on experience” are becoming mainstream, challenging the more traditional and pyramidal tertiary educational models.

With the “all information should be free” dogma The hackers were the first to realize the importance of data in future (now present) societies, and economies; and while we are all adapting to it, they are data-minded native, a big advantage.

Much more than bits… Passion, Freedom, Caring, Creativity… Real hackers embrace life at its full, far from being monads in their shiny technical superiority they aim to be complete people whit an active role in the society, starting from sharing their knowledge (because we do have too many problems to waste time to find the same solution to one of them twice). This mentality is just what we need for the 3^rd millennium citizen to have.

As a final note, hackers in my opinion have one merit, a big one, even despite the bad reputation, they managed to communicate, with their charisma and life example, a romantic and adventurous side of computer science, otherwise boring like a long string of zeros and ones.

Hackers as modern Heros can not only keep producing solutions for the digital era society problem, for everyone to benefit from, but they can also fascinate, educate and ultimately evangelize the masses whit their knowledge and values. They can be positive and inspiring role models.

So all things considered yes we need the hackers to be and stay whit us.