The Educational Ethics of Hackers

A mantra among hackers is “Less Yack, More Hack.” The hacker is a bricoleur, involved in “making do,” and, in doing so, recovering a non-alienated self. Yet being a “hacker” is more than mere individual inventiveness. It involves a larger set of ideals. A hacker should always practice freedom of expression, respect privacy, catalyze self-initiative, be enthusiastic about involvements, have a passionate attitude toward work, do work that is truly enjoyed, exercise creativity, and p...

 Religion is More than the Supernatural

Most developers are religious about technology   It’s true.   Don’t be ashamed, you are not alone.  Myself, and just about everyone else, is with you.   Some of use are recovering from our self-imposed brain washing.  Others of us are blissfully unaware of our predicament.  But most of us have at least one religion we’ve managed to craft ourselves.   It is perfectly natural because most programmers got into the field of software development because they were passionate about it.�...

 Encapsulation Serves a Purpose

The quintessential example of the open ideal showed up in Freeman Dyson’s otherwise wonderful piece about the future of synthetic biology in the New York Review of Books. MIT bioengineer Drew Endy, one of the enfants terribles of synthetic biology, opened his spectacular talk at Sci Foo with a slide of Dyson’s article. I can’t express the degree to which I admire Freeman, but in this case, we see things differently. Dyson equates the beginnings of life on Earth with the Eden of Linux. ...