Reading 01

    When I think of a hacker, I think of someone, of course with their hood up in a dark room breaking into something, but I also think of someone extremely intelligent and innovative in their work. For example, Henry Ford said, “If I would have asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses”. If it were me, initially I would have been trying to get the poor horses on steroids in hopes that they would become faster, but Henry Ford created a car.  A hacker to me is someone who can positively and or negatively innovate to impact someone else.      After reading, my perception changed of what a hacker was it became more negative. Initially, I felt as though the MIT hackers were selfish. The book depicted their sole purpose to find out information for themselves and satisfy their curiosity’s hunger. There was no mention of helping people outside of their group. It gave the impression that even if you were in the group you were in there because someone else found you useful to their curiosity. Curiosity is not a bad thing at all, and theirs was never of malicious intent, but it rubbed me the wrong way.      My mother always told me that too much of anything is never good, even good things. The book portrayed hackers to be people who do not simply stumble upon knowledge, but actively look for it. The inquisitive at MIT would get into some trouble, but they were passionate about understanding each new machine brought to them, but at what cost? I would like to consider myself a curious person with a love to learn. That is why computer science is interesting to me, everything is new and the possibilities are endless. I am also stubborn which I feel can be a good thing. The attributes curious, stubborn, and passionate are all characteristics of the hackers at MIT, but their attributes were more intense than mine, to say the least.      I am altering my mom’s statement that too much of anything is never good because it can take away from other things. In the book, the language surrounding the hackers’ work ethic was undoubtedly obsessive, they would blindly follow their curiosity. Everything they did was done with hacking at the forefront of their mind. They practiced unhealthy habits of always eating Chinese food and drinking Coke because to stay alive and hack they knew they had to eat, so the best option for them was Chinese food because it could get them back to hacking quickly. They were consistently never getting enough sleep, did not care much about classes or hygiene, and were only absorbed in the art of each new gadget brought to MIT. The more I read the more I shifted my thinking from selfish to druggies. “Junkies” and “fans” were words used to describe these MIT hackers. It made sense, I do not think there was anything that could prevent them from exploring. Hacking was their drug and they were growing and doing it in the trap house that was MIT.      The junkies at MIT had a side effect to the drug that they were taking, it was almost as if they were turning into computers themselves. The book introduces this idea of “the right thing” and how there is “always a solution that was just it”. The way they thought was very black and white, there was no room for a solution to be purple. Computers think this way, one true answer, on or off, what allows it to convince you there are more than those options is the human behind it but ultimately the decision is 1 or 0.      I think hacking is like a drug, there is a certain pleasure obtained from learning,  understanding, and creating a solution to something. All of these factors I believe make up a true hacker. As for whether or not I am a true hacker, I would say I am not because I don't quite have the solution part down, but I am a true hacker in training.