[hackerspaces] The Hacker Way

Far McKon farmckon at gmail.com
Sun Feb 5 01:28:33 CET 2012


Hmm.
I thought about this a bit before replying, and I'm cynical about that text
by Zuckerberg.  I think there are many ways to define The Hacker Way, and I
think much of his 'hacker way' is at odds with what I have seen as
hackerdom.

> Hacker culture is also extremely open and meritocratic.
 Yeah, I dig that paragraph

> Hacking is also an inherently hands-on and active discipline
  - So yeah, Zuckerberg's words are spot on on for that one, but how much
of FaceBook is just creation? As far as I see, it's all consumption.


Hackers generally believe in libertarian, local and/or personal control.
Zuckerberg's Facebook is very much about centralized control
Hacker culture is about granting, and removing trust, at one's own
discresion. Zuckerberg (via facebook) wants you to always trust him.
Hackers mostly believe decentralized is better than centralized.

Zuckerberg's 'The Hacker Way' has some thing's I agree with, but I
cretainly don't see it as THE* way.   I think Zuckerberg says a few things
right. I think Facebook's action (and Zuckerberg's actions) alight with
some of those values, but not all of them.   Overall  that whole speech is
an advert toward DIY folks for Facebook (not that's it's evil, it just is),
and I think it's a bit tone-deaf to the older school
security/outsider/anti-authoritarian audience.

Hack on,
- Far McKon

http://www.FarMcKon.net "Creatively Maladjusted"

P.S. I had a *lot* of respect for the (sadly, rather bad) book 'A Hacker
Manifesto' simply because they avoided the definitive article 'The'  If
that article was 'Our Hacker Way' or 'Facebook's Hacker Way' I think I'd
A-OK with it.
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