jjtay

Juliet Taylor                                                                                                               May 8, 2009

First Year Seminar

Professor Delwiche

                                                The Hacker Perspective

Many hackers live by the Stephen Levy’s phrase, “Always yield to the hands-on-imperative.” They would rather break open a device and analyze its parts than use it; they would rather improve technology than accept that it is the best it can be. Before taking this First Year Seminar Hacking class, I had a very narrow-minded view of hackers and the hacker subculture. In retrospect, the ideas presented in Levy’s Hacker Ethic and other course readings helped to challenge my erroneous assumption that all hackers use their technological power and knowledge to exploit others. Now I understand that two words characterize all hacker minds: creativity and determination. I was truly inspired by Levy’s Hacker Ethic and decided to yield to the hands on imperative myself by hacking into some pictures with the image editor Photoshop.

My project helps to highlight the unique hacker perspective, demonstrating how the term hacking is really just a term to describe the action of shattering preconceived ideas and generalizations about the world to see it in a new light or to see it from a different angle. Hackers see mechanical devices in such a different way than we do so to relate to this I decided to take pictures that depict the world in a strange and interesting way. First of all, I took pictures using the macro feature on my camera which is useful for capturing a focused close up photo. I also played around with various angles to change up the perspective.  After, I modified each picture using Photoshop, focusing on elements such as the amount of saturation, contrast, hue and brightness of the photo. It was interesting to see each picture morph before my eyes as I distorted reality.

In a broad sense, Photoshopping those pictures was like reverse engineering because it involves taking apart something, analyzing its structure and possibly attempting to re-create an improved version. According to Anna Newitz, reverse engineering means to, “break the warranty, open the box, mod your Xbox, don’t obey what company tells you to do with your technology.” Even though I didn’t necessarily break any rules during the process of making my art project, I did actively engage with the medium, aiming to create something new and original.

Another connection to reverse engineering concerns the format and organization of my project. Instead of presenting the audience with a picture that is easily recognizable, I decided to reverse the idea that pictures must depict a complete and recognizable scene. By taking shots of portions of something, I am making the presentation more engaging and challenging for the viewer.

            When it was time to start connecting my pictures to the course readings, I found myself wanting to venture out into the World Wide Web to find other sources to convey certain aspects of the hacker point of view. I found some interesting articles from writers I had heard of before like Dorothy Denning. Also, I stumbled on an article by Tom Chance that describes and elaborates upon the ideas in the Hacker Ethic. For instance, he writes, “To hack is to dedicate yourself to realizing your full human potential; to take an essentially active, rather than passive stance towards your environment.” This directly relates to the Hacker Ethic because according to Levy, people should take matters into their own hands, experiment with new ideas and not be afraid to take a chance.

            Tom Chance also addresses the idea that “hacking could involve the heartfelt conviction that beauty can be found in computers, that the fine aesthetic in a perfect program can liberate the mind and spirit”. This reminds me of the MIT hackers that spend hours and hours on end eliminating lines of unnecessary code in order to create a more efficient program. Until this class, I never considered an efficient program beautiful. However, I realized that in order to understand completely, I had to hack into my own connotations and perceptions of certain words like beautiful and have an open mind. With an open mind, I was able to realize that the words of Tom Chance and Stephen Levy are referring to a different kind of beauty, a beauty that exists because of a program’s simplicity or on the other end of the scale, its complexity.

            Another theme of the course that I found particularly compelling was the idea of “the gravest security risk of all-human nature” which Kevin Mitnick highlighted in his book. It was interesting to me to think that many of the loopholes in computer security can be the fault of someone who was not paying attention closely to something that may have been right in front of their eyes. This relates to the unique hacker perspective because hackers can take advantage of those loopholes in security. Dorothy Denning sums up the hacker point of view pretty well by saying, “We often say that breaking into a system implies a lack of caring for the system's owner and authorized users.  But, one hacker says that the ease of breaking into a system reveals a lack of caring on the part of the system manager to protect user and company assets, or failure on the part of vendors to warn managers about the vulnerabilities of their systems.”

                                                            Works Cited

               Chance, Tom. "Dissertation on the Hacker Ethic and Meaningful Work." Tom Chance's Website. 3 Aug. 2005. 4 May 2009 <http://tom.acrewoods.net/research/hackerethic/ dissertation#SECTION00030000000000000000>.

               Denning, Dorothy. "Concerning Hackers Who Break into Computer Systems." WindowSecurity. 19 Apr. 2000. 3 May 2009 <http://www.windowsecurity.com/uplarticle/16/Hackers-NCSC.txt

            Levy, Steven (1994) "The Hacker Ethic," Hackers: Heroes of the computer revolution. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday.

Mitnick, Kevin. The Art of Deception. Indianapolis : Wiley Publishing, 2002.

Newitz , Annalee (2007) "Capitalist monsters, RFID and Internet tubes," Hack This Zine, v.5

So I have been playing around with Second Life lately…no need to care about real life anymore haha just kidding. I first heard about Second Life in my psychology class during my senior year and overall I thought the idea was pretty silly but after learning all about programmers and technocrats this year in class, I have a greater appreciation of computer programmers and the ingenious programs they create. I feel like I have become more open to investigating new computer programs and games like Second Life! For my creation in Second Life, I had no idea what to make so I just started messing around with the shapes and I made a simple symmetrical structure. It was inspired from an art piece I am making in I wanted to make a pretty, decorated garden but I can’t put “grass or trees on land that isn’t mine” so I used the materials I could! I hope to learn how to make more complex creations in time!

So I want my art project to showcase my own creative style while also conveying some of the main themes that we have discussed during the course. Recently, I have become very interested in photography so I was thinking of playing around with the features on my camera to take some cool pictures from interesting angles and distances in order to stress how perspective changes ones perception of something which can relate to the way hackers tend to view the world in a different way because of their unique perspective. I also wanted to create a project that doesn’t necessarily use a tremendous amount of technology to contrast with projects that people from my class will create.

In order to deliver an interesting presentation of my project, I wanted to include an interactive element so that the audience will be engaged! I am going to put together a PowerPoint presentation that includes pictures of objects or scenes that are hard to recognize at first glance. I will ask the audience what they think each picture is and what makes it hard to recognize. Also, I had the idea of including photo puzzles where the actual picture can only be recognized when all the pieces are put in their places. Along with this, I plan to explain Kevin Mitnick’s important message of how tidbits of information are not necessarily valuable unless they are combined. I plan to include more information from the articles that we have read and creatively relate them to the pictures I include in my PowerPoint!

Gee whizzz, I had no idea that I would be eventually attempting to program in my First Year Seminar class! A while back when we first started talking about how everyone should strive to understand computers better and not let the technocrats be the only ones who are brave enough to enter the world of computer programming I agreed but until this Scratch project I was not yet challenged to take on the role of a computer programmer myself! At first, it seemed like a daunting task and I had no idea where to start. I began by sampling other Scratch user’s games and brainstorming about what my game would be. I decided it was realistic to aim to create a simple game because of my non-existent programming experience. It was cool to get to use a program like Scratch to begin my explorations of programming! So in my game, the player is the frog and the point of the game is to chase around the bee wherever it randomly goes. Also, the game is over if you hit the beach ball so consider yourself warned! Here’s the link: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/jjtay/488124

Scratch is a very interesting and innovative program that is based on basic elements of programming language so that people of all ages can take advantage of its capabilities. The program is easy to use and includes all kinds of interactive objects, graphics and sounds that can be combined in a unique creation. The Scratch slogan is Imagine, Program, Share which drives home the idea that with creative vision, one can use Scratch to execute their ideas, share it with others and implement ideas from projects of other users. Since this program is free it exemplifies Steven Levy’s Hacker Ethic of “All information should be free.” By providing this open-source program to anyone and by making Scratch easy to use, the founders of Scratch have enhanced the possibility of greater creativity through the use of Scratch.

So the first game that I played was Snake: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/ernestpazera/7003. It is an easy game that gets harder and harder as you play which is a good feature to keep the user engaged and addicted! The point of the game is to steer the green snake with the arrow keys toward the red pellets while also not letting the snake touch itself or the walls. To play this game, quick reaction skills and spatial awareness are imperative. Another game that caught my attention was the Son of String Art game: http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/hottie1232002/117545. The game makes String Art inbetween blue dots that you can drag around the square. Also, you can click on the pre-made shapes at the top to get some ideas. I like how the features allow for creativity yet also give you some ideas to work with at first. I had fun experimenting with this game. It will be entertaining to make a game of my own this week!

            First of all, I have never encountered a website quite like PMOG. I was creatively inspired by its unique idea of allowing users to teach other users something through the missions they create. I like how the creators of PMOG expanded on the idea of a collaborative blog or wiki site that allows any user to post something on the site no matter what their credentials may be. Therefore, the usefulness of PMOG ultimately depends on how much time and effort the users put into their missions. It's a great site to search through websites that someone might not think about when looking for certain information about a topic. The site can help point you in new and interesting directions on the internet. PMOG provides a platform that allows for easy sharing of information and a fun online experience that can turn into a competition!

            Even though there are many positive aspects about PMOG, there are some negative elements of the website as well. I noticed some of them when I first started using the program. Creating an account and logging on was simple but then after that I had no idea what to do first. I had to find my way around the site and frankly, I was really confused about the whole point of the site and what the point of PMOGGING was. Once I began to click on links and tabs, I read some of the information and figured out what was going on but overall, it seemed to me like the site was not very organized and some graphics of the site were distracting. By removing some of the pictures and making the site look a tad more professional, the users are likely to take more time creating their missions and care more about what they post on the website.

            After looking through and taking some of the missions, I think that some were very educational and did provide useful information. However, others were not. Maybe there should be a list of sample missions created by the PMOG team to show everyone on the site a model of an effective and educational mission that will allow the users to engage in the subject matter. If people know what to strive for when making their missions, maybe the quality of their missions will improve!

In American culture and other cultures around the world, women are rarely seen as equals to men. Even though there are many women who possess the same talents, skills and are just as intelligent or even more intelligent than other men, they have are still not considered as equals. Frequently, women are simply judged by their sex. In the geeky world, women are many times not accepted unless they can act like “one of the boys.”

            Ellen Spertus admits in “Professor in a Circuit-Board Closet” that “the best way to retain [her] status and self-respect in [her] family was to act like a male and disdain anything feminine.” (Newitz 40) Instead of being proud of her fierce feminine nature, she felt that to be taken seriously, she had to blend into the group of male nerds that she was surrounded by at MIT. She even remembers “having negative responses to the rare female students who dressed attractively, styled their hair, or behaved in a “feminine” manner-feeling they made it more difficult for women like me who just wanted to be one of the guys.” (41)

            Eventually, she began to change her view between women and nerdiness. Going to a conference with a bunch of female nerds caused her to realize that there were many other women in her exact position. Being surrounded by smart, determined women like herself inspired her to think differently about her own life. No longer would she have to be bound by societal stereotypes but she could flourish as a woman and a nerd! After her realization, she began to embrace her feminity and won the title of “Sexiest Geek Alive”.  Like a hacker, she explored and challenged the traditional way women are seen. She hacked into the cultural norms and found a way to change her life and also affect others. “She offers hope for all beleaguered geeks [who] suffered through gym class…They may not be sexy now, but one day they will be dazzling.” (49) Her experience shows how “to succeed, we don’t need to follow anyone else’s model.” (49) Women’s unique and creative ideas bring some much needed variety to this male-dominated world. If women just conform to the group of males around them then they are letting down all females. What’s the point of being female if we can’t be proud of it?

            Ellen’s memoir proves how through personal observation of her life and observation of other females like her, she was able to rethink her opinions about women in the technology world. Her personal words are full of incredible insight and represent an epiphany that changed her life dramatically. In my opinion, her story is a challenge to me and all females out there to be themselves and not be afraid to represent two fully developed personas: a nerdy side and a feminine side!

 Reference:

Newitz, A., & Anders, C. (2006). Professor in a Circuit-Board Closet. In E. Spertus, She's Such A Geek! (pp. 40-49). California: Seal Press.

            So this time, the Bad Ass Alliance (aka Andrew and Juliet), made a mission that will be useful and interesting for anyone who comes across it on the new PMOG which is now called The Nethernet! Here’s a link to it: Hack Your Brain. Our mission focuses on the brain and how we can improve its functioning with simple, easy tricks. In a sense, this collection of websites can help you hack into your brain because they demonstrate how to stretch your brain and how to keep it young and efficient.

            Using Mindjet MindManager, I put together a diagram that shows the layout of our mission starting at the top left and going clockwise around the main topic in the middle. I just put all the main titles of each in the diagram but I will explain the relevance of each. Primarily, we started out with a cool YouTube video to get the user hooked right at the beginning. Then, we included a Wikipedia article about the brain so that users can read over some parts that are interesting to them to get an idea about the brain and its complexities. Before we hack into our brain, it’s beneficial to know more about its inner workings. The mission dialog box in the upper left includes a question about the website and the users are encouraged to write down their answers because at the end they can compare them to the answers of the other users who took the mission.

            The third website has a list of ways to improve your mental cognition, alertness and memory. I wanted to include this website because it highlights numerous easy ways to “hack” into your brain. Usually, hacking is seen as a very complicated activity but in this case, hacking into your brain and improving its functioning is as easy as drinking eight glasses of water a day. The fourth website introduces the Brain Wave Generator that creates binaural beats that can change your state of mind. The website includes ways to quit smoking, lose weight or improve learning results.

            The next two websites includes some brain puzzles that are fun but keep your mind sharp. We wanted to include these puzzles because they have an interactive element that encourages the user to really get engaged in the mission instead of just passively clicking through each website. The seventh website shows ways to trick your brain and change the way you see the world! Finally, we wanted to provide a place where users could comment on our mission and check their answers so the last link is a YouTube link that allows them to post their answers to the questions we asked during the mission. Now that you've read all about it, don't hesitate to go and take our mission!

PMOG is a Passively Multiplayer Online Game. When first thinking of a computer game, I think of something that requires all of your attention to accomplish a particular goal or set of goals in order to win, however, PMOG is different in the way that it is played while surfing other sites. To play PMOG, you go on missions created by other PMOG users that require viewing a group of related websites dedicated to a certain topic. In the right hand corner, the creator the mission can add additional comments about the site or summarize it which makes surfing even more efficient. As you go through the mission, data points are added to your score. Also, while surfing, the true gaming aspect is demonstrated by the way that users can communicate and compete with each other online by trying to gain the most data points. The antagonists of the game are in the alliance of chaos and they place mines on random sites. On the other side, the alliance of order, battles against the evil influences of the alliance of chaos to help other users in their missions by providing them with opportunities to gain more data points.

            For my first mission, I decided to put “hacking” in the search bar and many selections came up. The first website called Learn That defines the term hacker in many different ways and leaves the definition of a hacker open and unbiased. For instance, it defines hacking as the ability “to interact with a computer in a playful and exploratory rather than goal-directed way.”  This definition reminded me of the way in which we have defined a hacker in our class through Levy’s “Hands-On Imperative”. This definition helps people think about hacking in non-stereotypical way and start to think about some of the positive rather than negative connotations of the term. In my opinion, this shows that PMOG can be valuable in the way that it allows users to visit sites through the mission that they might not normally visit and encounter new and fresh ideas about a topic they realize they don’t know much about. However, it also brings up the question whether the sites that are included in the missions are reliable so it is important when playing this game to be able to think critically about the source of the information.

            It’s interesting that when you start researching and reading on the internet, you begin to realize just how much you do not know. The knowledge of the users of PMOG is what makes it beneficial. It’s almost like a hacker community that relies on the support and commitment of each hacker. If the users playing PMOG do not take it seriously and do not contribute to the site then the site is not functioning to its full potential.  PMOG is fun with features like the mines, crates and st. nicks yet also surprisingly useful at the same time. By being able to tour the missions of other users, a tremendous amount of information is being shared and users are benefiting from each other’s knowledge and creations in true hacker style.

My first impression of Mindjet Mind Manager is that the home page is very organized, clean and user-friendly. It was really easy for me to figure out how to install the program and on top of that, the installation was speedy.

            When opening Mindjet Mind Manager, I realized how visually similar the program is to Microsoft Office 2007. Primarily, I clicked on the tutorial for new users and it took me through the basics of using the program. From the tutorial, I learned the general terms that are used for each component on the mind map and also the basic functions. It was interesting to learn that there is more than one way to add on to the mind map and there are alternative ways to do certain functions which makes learning how to use the program flexible for a new user like me!

            The “Learning Center” on the side seemed pretty helpful to me because it included clear directions to help people use the program better and also some sample mind maps to get some ideas about the possibilities of the program. For a first-time-user like me, it was great to have the “Interactive Quick Start” window pop up that guided me through the process of creating a mind map. In my opinion, it seems more efficient to be guided through the process the first time to get the feeling of the program instead of just playing around on it to figure it out.

            This program definitely seems like a good tool to help businesses and think tanks brainstorm more efficiently and in an organized manner. The end result of mind-mapping with the program could be used in presentations because it looks very professional although for my brainstorming, I would rather use paper.

                                                         Profile of Igor Stravinsky

            The Rite of Spring broke numerous rules of composition with unconventional tonality, barbaric rhythms, and disturbing, dissonant harmonies. Composed by the famous Igor Fedorovich Stravinsky, The Rite of Spring offended audiences to such an extent that a riot broke out and protests made it so that dancers had a difficult time continuing the performance because they could hardly hear their cues. Strangely, this provocative and chaotic performance at the Theatre des Champs-Elyees in Paris on May 29, 1913, marked the true beginnings of Twentieth Century Music. (Boynick). The performance “transformed the way in which subsequent composers thought about rhythmic structure, and was largely responsible for Stravinsky’s enduring reputation as a musical revolutionary, pushing the boundaries of musical design.” (Igor Stravinsky). Stravinsky displays many hacker tendencies presented in Stephen Levy’s Hacker Ethic and also other hacker characteristics. As a musical revolutionary, he uses the musical ideas of previous composers and his own unparalleled ideas to create art and beauty.

            Igor Stravinsky was born on June 17, 1882 in Oranienbaum, Russia. At a young age, he learned piano and attended harmony and counterpoint lessons that encouraged him to develop a strong foundation of Russian folk music. Stravinsky witnessed his first ballet performance, Sleeping Beauty by Tchaikovsky, at the Majinsky Theatre in 1890 and was instantly intrigued by the orchestral music. He continued to work on his music and mastered Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto in G minor. He most likely inherited his natural musical talent from his father, Fyodor Stravinsky, who was an opera singer for the Imperial Opera in Saint Petersburg. Despite his love for music and musical upbringing, his parents refused to let him pursue a career in music. Instead, his parents sent him to Saint Petersburg University to study criminal law and legal philosophy (330, Osborne).  Even though Stravinsky’s parents knew that he was highly gifted in music, they did not see a musical career as being an acceptable profession for their son. Hacking and composing are similar in the way that many times they are not seen by society as acceptable careers for intelligent men or women.

            However, this negative stigma did not prevent Stravinsky from following his dreams. Similar to a hacker, Stravinsky was determined to follow his true passion in life even if his family and society looked down upon it.  At 20 years of age, Stravinsky got in contact with the composer Rimsky-Korsakov who served as his composition tutor and ended up being one of his greatest musical influences. Many of Stravinsky’s “folk song-inspired melodies were clearly derived from Rimsky-Korsakov but the primitive offbeat, rhythmic drive he added entirely on his own” (Glass). Displaying hacker tendencies toward creativity and innovation, he dismantled traditional music writing and revealed his own musical voice by personalizing tonal, polytonal and twelve tone serial elements. Stravinsky is well known for his stylistic diversity which is exemplified in his rearrangement of a piece by a French piano manufacturer named Pleyel. He personalized Pleyel’s brand of player piano by composing a piece that requires the use of all the piano’s 88 notes (Igor Stravinsky). The piece was rare for that time period because it did not take into account the number or span of the piano player’s fingers and hands. Instead of creating a work of art that was clearly realistic, Stravinsky strived to produce a piece that challenged orchestras. For instance, “many orchestras found his music beyond their capabilities and unfathomable” (Igor Stravinsky). While stylistic elements from music credited to earlier eras existed in his music, he always found a way to create a distinctive piece that was clearly his own creation.

            Metaphorically speaking, he hacked into the methods and procedures of musical composition and reinvented art by collaborating with other composers, discovering new elements of musical design and by simply being open to the cultural influences surrounding him. His composing reflected eclectic influences from composers such as “Tchaikovsky, Borodin, Glazunov, Debussy and Dukas” (Boynick). The Firebird and The Rite of Spring demonstrate his eclectic mixture of sources yet also exemplify his ability to build on the works of others to produce a highly unique musical masterpiece. His use of folk tunes reflect his knowledge of traditional Russian music; however, he hacks into the rules of composition and turns the idea on its head by using “forms [which] are additive rather than symphonic, created by placing blocks of material together without disguising the joins.” His music was unique in the way that it exhibited a much more rhythmic rather than harmonic aura. Instead of building the music in an organized and clear manner, the music was unique for that time because it sounded spontaneous and expressive through barbaric and chaotic rhythmic beats.

            Stravinsky’s Pulcinella (1920), introduced the neo-classical period in music that was characterized by a “re-exploring [of] past forms, styles and gestures with the irony of nondevelopmental material being placed in developmental molds” (Sherrane). Overhauling his Russian nationalist musical education, his music began to reflect European classical traditions. Evidence of this cultural switch in his music can be seen in works of his such as the Symphonies of Wind Instruments and the Octet for Wind Instruments. Relating to hackers, composers like Stravinsky can also utilize their awareness of past creations to help them envision and produce an original artistic work. Using their knowledge from the past, they are able to analyze what was seen as impossible, that which is seen as impossible today and break down those barriers of impossibility in art. Instead of viewing the idioms or set ways of composing as a barrier or obstacle to his artistic endeavors, Stravinsky saw the already constructed methods of composition as a jumping off point for musical exploration and experimentation. Similarly, hackers see a software program or simply a computer as a jumping off point for improvement. Frequently, they encounter some kind of technology and assume that there is some way to change, transform and fine tune it. Composers like Stravinsky hear music everywhere and use that knowledge of music to improve musical knowledge by innovating and discovering new musical possibilities.

            Not only does Stravinsky’s work reflect musical elements from other composers of the time and from the past, it also reflects the benefits of his professional relationships with prominent people in the United States. Stravinsky moved to Los Angeles in 1939 after World War II broke out and became a naturalized citizen in 1946 (332, Osborne). Similar to hackers who realize they will be more efficient if they have a support group working on improving a program, Stravinsky began to understand the benefits of having a social network of friends and contacts in order to further his professional life. The composers and conductors like Otto Klemperer, Franz Werfel, George Balanchine and Arthur Rubenstein all attracted him to settling down in Los Angeles. Soon after moving to L.A., he met the young American musician and conductor Robert Craft who became a close friend to Stravinsky. Craft introduced Stravinsky to composers such as Schonberg, Berg and Webern and Stravinsky was greatly interested by the possibilities of serialism which Webern used frequently. Serialism is a technique that uses a set of twelve pitches of the chromatic scale to form a row as the basis for the composition’s melody, harmony, structural progressions and variations. He began composing his own serial music which included pieces such as Agon, Canticum Sacrum, and Requiem Canticles. Craft became Stravinsky’s musical and literary collaborator. They collaborated on five volumes of Conversations with Igor Stravinsky which included numerous interviews in which the composer spoke to Robert Craft (Igor Stravinsky). It is interesting that Stravinsky was so open about his collaboration with various composers instead of trying to hide the connections between his work and the works of other musical geniuses. He allowed for collaboration with other composers and in turn, he greatly affected many of them to the extent or more than they affected him. Because of this major influence in the musical world at that time, “he was a quintessentially cosmopolitan Russian who was named by the Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of the century” (Glass).

            Like criminal hackers, composer’s dissections and experimentations with the works of others’ can get them into some serious trouble. For instance, Stravinsky got arrested by the Boston Police for violating a federal law that prohibited the reharmonization of the National Anthem. Illegally Stravinsky added an unconventional major seventh chord in his new reinvention of the Star Spangled-Banner and he had to deal with the consequences. This proves that even though Stravinsky was a composer, he could still get into trouble for having access to certain information and using it in an uncharacteristic way, just as hackers. But instead of the stereotypical teenager boy sitting in front of a computer screen finding his way into unauthorized territories, it was a professional composer who found the world a place to explore and truly harnessed Stephen Levy’s “hands-on imperative”.

                                                                Reference Section

Igor Stravinsky Biography

Classical Music Pages: Stravinsky

Time 100: Igor Stravinsky

Wikipedia Article on Stravinsky

The Rite of Spring

Firebird

Pulcinella

Stravinsky’s Biographical Background

Works Cited

               “Boynick, Matt. "Igor Stravinsky." Classical Music Pages. 1 Feb. 2006. 10 Feb. 2009 <http://w3.rz-berlin.mpg.de/cmp/stravinsky.html>. 

               Glass, Philip. "Igor Stravinsky." TIME. 8 June 1998. 1 Feb. 2009 <http://www.time.com/time/ time100/artists/profile/stravinsky.html>. 

"Igor Stravinsky." Wikipedia. 9 Feb. 2009. 6 Feb. 2009 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Igor_Stravinsky>.

               Levy, Stephen. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. New York: Dell Publishing Company, 1968. 

               Osborne, Charles. "Igor Stravinsky." The Dictionary of Composers. New York: Taplinger Publishing Company, 1977. 330-334. 

When thinking of the 1960’s, certain characteristics of the youth culture come to mind. The youth culture was considered a counterculture because they rebelled against conservative norms and distanced themselves from mainstream liberalism and materialism. Popularly known as the “hippies”, my parents’ generation questioned authority and the government’s actions while standing up for rights for minorities like women and homosexuals. While the mainstream culture of the United States included a heavy reliance on technology, at first the counterculture rejected the endless possibilities of the technological advances of the time. The counterculture also resisted the rational and scientific world.

The counterculture of the 1960’s is not anti-technology by any means but they definitely had a negative view of the technology because of the way it was associated with technocracy. An article by Andrew Ross titled, “Hacking Away at the Counter-culture” reveals how from the perspective of the youth counterculture, “information technology [was] seen as the most despotic mode of domination yet, generating not just a revolution in capitalist production but also a revolution in living--"social Taylorism"--that touches all cultural and social spheres in the home and in the workplace.”(1) The government used technology in a controlling way evident in “one of the stories told by the critical left about new cultural technologies [that allow] monolithic, panoptical social control, effortlessly achieved through a smooth, endlessly interlocking system of networks of surveillance.” In their minds, technology was a means of control and a symbol of centralized authority.

As many of America’s youth were being dragged off to war, technology was advancing rapidly and it only seemed to be concentrated in the hands of the powerful government. While young protesters voiced their opinions against the Vietnam War, the second generation of hackers showed their disapproval of the government in a different way by inventing the personal computer. (2) The goal of hackers was to bring information technology into the hands of ordinary people which changed the whole view of computers from being a means of control to being a channel to express oneself. The TIME article, “WE OWE IT ALL TO THE HIPPIES” includes that “a tiny contingent -- later called ``hackers'' -- embraced computers and set about transforming them into tools of liberation. That turned out to be the true royal road to the future.” (2) Technology became a symbol of freedom rather than constraint.

(1) http://www.iath.virginia.edu/pmc/text-only/issue.990/ross-2.990

(2) http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,982602,00.html

David Lightman in “War Games” reminds me of the description of a low-tech hacker in “Growth of a Low-tech Hacker” by The Roving Eye. He is an intelligent, high school boy whose mind is full of curiosity about the way technology works. He is a low-tech hacker because he figures out that sometimes “the best answers to beating a system can be the simplest.” (The Roving Eye, 384) In his free time, he teaches himself about computers and explores the world around him which he finally realizes, can get him into some serious trouble. Along with this idea, David Lightman exemplifies some aspects of The Hacker Ethic that includes hacker characteristics known by other hackers which is presented in Stephen Levy’s book, “Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution”. The first aspect of The Hacker Ethic is “Access to computers-and anything which might teach you something about the way the world works- should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative”. The actions of David illustrate his eagerness to learn about the inner workings of technology which is one of the main motivations of hackers. However, David also uses his desire to follow the “hands-on imperative” in a selfish manner by hacking into his school district’s computer system to change his failing grade.

David has his computer dial every single number in Sunnyvale, California in order to find the system that will allow him play a computer game that is going to be coming out soon. To him, using his computer and modem to perform automated searches for systems connected to the public phone system, seems like a harmless pastime.  Illustrating the second tenet of The Hacker Ethic, “All information should be free”, David becomes determined to find the password to get into a computer system to play the computer game. He has no idea how a piece of information such as the backdoor password that seems so innocuous to him can actually allow access into a system that includes more than just Chess and Tic-Tac Toe.

The third aspect of The Hacker Ethic is “Mistrust Authority –Promote Decentralization.”David doesn’t directly represent this tenet of The Hacker Ethic because his primary goal by hacking into the system was not because he was skeptical of or doesn’t trust the actions of NORAD. He ended up messing around with NORAD because he was bored and wanted to play a silly computer game.

The fourth aspect of The Hacker Ethic includes the idea that hackers are judged by their hacking accomplishments and not by other criteria such as degrees, age, race or position like in the bureaucratic world. Even though David is so young and relatively inexperienced with computers, he can still be considered a hacker because of the simple yet ingenious schemes he devises to hack into various technological devices. Throughout the movie, David performs actions that show his hacker spirit. From the complicated public phone system plot to the more simple payphone scheme, he demonstrates his imagination with solving problems.

“You can create art and beauty on a computer” is the fifth aspect. Even though David did not create any of the programs that he successfully hacked into, it could be argued that he did realize a beautiful answer to the problem of the WOPR taking over the NORAD computer system. He cleverly taught the WOPR to play Tic-Tac-Toe against itself and stops playing the “Global Thermonuclear War” game that turned out to be real. In a way, his action proved that sometimes humans are needed to fix or supervise technology because it’s not always perfect.

“Computers can change your life for the better” is the last aspect of The Hacker Ethic. In David’s case, I think he had a very narrow view of the power that computers hold at the beginning of the movie. Throughout the movie, as he learned more about technology he began to see it’s potential positively and finally negatively at the end. While he admired computers for their logical algorithms and methods, by the end of the movie he came to see that sometimes loopholes can exist in computer systems that lead to a huge chaotic mess.

My brother, Wes, is a classic example of the stereotypical computer nerd. At the young age of ten, he had his hands on his first computer. Filled with abundant curiosity, he began dissecting and exploring the inner workings of his new technological toy. It wasn’t long before he figured out how to put all the parts back together and restore it to its original, operating state. Through the process, he learned about the computer’s hardware which provided an educational foundation for learning about the computer’s software.

            Currently, Wes is a computer technician with his own company called SDTech with a website here: http://www.sd-tech.net/. He specializes in network administration, voice and data wiring, website programming and more.  For my family and I, it is much easier to call him to deal with our technological dilemmas rather than hopelessly search for solutions ourselves. In true technocratic fashion, he benefits from all the ignorant computer users out there. If it weren’t for them, he would be jobless.

            Since I arrived at Trinity, I noticed my computer becoming more and more sluggish. I called up my brother and soon he was playing around on my computer, clicking right and left with quick, nimble fingers. In a short amount of time, he had diagnosed the problem and I had no idea how he had just fixed my problem. In my mind and to most of the public, figuring out how to fix a problem such as slow functioning requires serious concentration. To my brother, it is an everyday task that can be completed while talking on the phone, jamming out to some fresh tunes and eating a cheeseburger. His second language is “computer language”. His profession does not encourage teaching of that complex computer language because it is a waste of time to him. If he were to teach his clients how to fix his own problems then he probably wouldn’t get quite as much business as he does. And boy does he have tons of clients, most of them old. His decision to do everything for his clients can be seen as furthering the computer knowledge gap between the public and the computer nerds of the world.  

            Just as hackers affect us on a societal level, the auto mechanics that work on our cars can also be seen as having the power for technocratic domination in a sociological way. Auto mechanics are supposed to specialize in automobile maintenance and repair which most of the public is not educated about so it would be simple for them to take advantage of customers’ lack of knowledge or experience in the field of mechanics. As a personal example, I have a friend who has had numerous problems with her Volvo. She takes it to the shop in Alamo Heights probably every week and every week something else is wrong. Recently, her oxygen sensor needed to be replaced so she got a new one and the next day, yet again, her car was saying it needed another one. Because my friend doesn’t have any knowledge in that area, she is forced to take everything they say even if it means shelling out more money than it’s worth. To conclude, I am not blaming all auto mechanics saying they do unethical work but it is very possible because of their job position.