[hackerspaces] bring back the crime - "hacker" is starting to mean "creative entrepeneur"

hellekin hellekin at dyne.org
Wed Sep 23 04:27:09 CEST 2015


On 09/22/2015 09:10 PM, Mark Rosenblitt-Janssen wrote:
> 
> It was Michael who made the statement about missing the association
> with crime, not hellekin.
>

Right.

> BREAKING new ground to create new understanding.  Not walking through
> guidebooks that hold your hand the whole way which is what
> hackerspaces have been doing.  Once in long while something creative
> turns up in a hackerspace.  AND?!?
>

You didn't finish your line of thought.  Anyway, I can't see why walking
through guidebooks wouldn't be inspiring for doing creative
things--one's gotta get inspiration from somewhere.  If you don't go
through basic mathematics, chances are you won't break any new ground in
mathematics.  But I'll retain this sentence because it's relevant:
"BREAKING new ground to create new understanding".  I think that Mitch's
TV-B-Gone did exactly that.  And it also served as inspiration to create
Consumer-B-Gone.  Without TV-B-Gone, would have Consumer-B-Gone be
created?  Maybe, maybe not.  But it certainly was an inspiration to
create a device that blocks the cart wheels in supermarkets, in an
analogy--or as an extension--of shutting down TV sets around you.  None
of these projects are illegal, although they may be punished as if you
were a criminal when you're caught smiling too much.  Does the crime
makes the hack?  Only, IMO, if you're in a dick contest in a high-school
classroom.

>> When I said I didn't like the association with crime, it's because the
>> term "hacker" is not a made up thing like "intellectual property" that
>> confounds many different things into one meaningless term.
> 
> But that's what also makes it powerful.
>

Define "it"?  I can't follow your thought, again.

> You see, the association with crime makes it mutually EXCLUSIVE to
> entrepreneurship.
>

I can't see why.  Have you heard about Volkswagen recently?

> 
> Woah, woah woah, right there pardner.  It's not a crime until the
> Judge says it's a crime.
>

So you mean that it's fine that other people define the terms for you.
I don't mean to offend you, after all, if The Mentor had not been
arrested, we wouldn't have his Manifesto.  But...

> Comprende?
> 

No, I don't.  I was telling that "crime" is relative.  Not only to
justice or the law, but also to who's allegedly committed it, who's
judging...  Remember?  That was the part you cut on "and blackmailing";
same sentence, one meaning.  If you cut it in the middle, it loses its
meaning.  I was also mentioning the fact computer fraud can be punished
more severely than murder.  Entiendes?

> Because, you don't know:  is the organization a criminal outfit?
>

This is exactly what my sentence was saying, but you didn't read it.

> These are the
> things the hacker needs to keep in mind for clever circumvention of
> unnecessary or unrighteous obstacles.
>

See, we agree.

>  One's liberty is absolute until it infringes upon another's.
>

Here we don't anymore.  I think that one's liberty is never absolute.
One's liberty is only as strong as other people's liberty: the freer you
are, the freer I can be; as long as there are slaves, I won't be free.

>  Whose liberty is being infringed upon
> when a teenager dials up a huge mainframe at CorpX?
>

It all depends on what the teenager is doing with the knowledge they get
from this access.

==
hk

-- 
 _ _     We are free to share code and we code to share freedom
(_X_)yne Foundation, Free Culture Foundry * https://www.dyne.org/donate/


More information about the Discuss mailing list