Reading 01: No True Hacker


When I was younger, I thought of a “true hacker” as a young guy in his mid 20s, usually wearing a

trench coat and sunglasses (even indoors!), who got into databases or got control of systems 

remotely. After taking systems programming, my view shifted more towards a more broad view,

that hackers are basically just people who do side projects. However, reading through this week’s

reading, I’ve come to think of a “true hacker” as someone who creates something with pure

passion, especially if that something is a modification of or interacts with an existing system, and is

willing to spend an inordinate amount of time working on their project. 

 

I think especially of the early hackers from MIT of the Tech Model Railroad Club as my example

of “true hackers”. When I was reading the stories of how they would spend 30 hours over a

weekend just learning about new systems, or that they would stay up until 3 in the morning or

switch to 30 hour days just to have more time to play around with a computer, I realized that having

true passion is an incredibly important part of being a hacker. In that regard I suppose I do aspire

to be a hacker. Having the drive and passion to work as long as the TMRC hackers did is

incredibly

admirable and something I would like to emulate. While I’ve worked for long stretches of time

before, I’ve only rarely worked as long or as hard as the early hackers did, and never as often as

they did - I can’t imagine staying up until 3 in the morning in the hopes that I might get the chance

to work on a project of mine on a consistent basis. 

 

However, there are also some problematic parts of being considered a “true hacker” that makes

me reticent from identifying with or even aspiring to be one. Firstly, the hacker culture is a non

inclusive one, based on our readings and discussion in class. Even if the hacker ethic in theory

states that hackers should be judged based on their merits and not inherent characteristics like

race, gender, education status, etc., we see that many early hackers had shockingly sexist ideas,

to the point where they’d probably be called incels today. It makes some sense that in the ‘60s

there would be some degree of sexism within the hacker subculture, especially as there were

very few women at MIT at the time, but the sexism still remains to this day and seems to still be

present within the culture around programming and the industry itself. 

 

In addition to the non inclusive aspects of the hacker culture, another thing that makes me shy

away from wanting to be a “true hacker” is simply the amount of time that these hackers spend

on their projects. While I admire it, and I wish I could do it, it is not something that I want to do all

the time, if that makes sense. I want to have a more balanced lifestyle, with other interests that I

can spend time on, and more time with my friends. While some of the hackers were able to

maintain some social relationships, a lot of them shunned that in favor of just their group of

hackers, and their work. In a sense that is admirable, but I do not like the idea of basing my life

entirely around hacking, to the degree that these hackers did. 

 

 

 

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