The Hacker Ethic: And the Spirit of the Infornation Age

There are many who may disagree with this book, but the viewpoints and in-depth analysis by the authors is inspiring. They will make you reexamine life, the workplace, and even your free time. Looking at the world through hacker glasses is really interesting. Not something you'll see on any Nova or Discovery show. You'll need to read.

This is an excellent book that often inspired me to anger - not at the book itself, but at how obvious most of the insights within it are. I'm sorry, but I've been up to speed with this book for most of my life, and yet I thoroughly enjoyed the book. It's concise an clear. It makes its point (I say "it" since there are several sections, not all written by the same person).It's a great book, and definitely deserves the very cool iconic cover (once you remove the silly plastic wraparound).I would call it revelatory if I wasn't already aware of the hacker culture and idealogy.

I should say up front that I'm not totally disinterested in the Hacker Ethic. I'm a media critic and author and I blurbed this book, something I don't do a lot. I did -- and am writing this review -- because I feel strongly that this is a very important book advancing a central idea -- the hacker ethic, profoundly misunderstood and demonized by the popular media, is important, both to politics and work. This isn't another in the avalanche of impenetrable cyber-culture books. It looks backwards as well as forwards, to the Protestant Ethic that has shaped many of our lives, and beyond, to the hacker joy and passion. The hacker ethic has trigger a true social and cultural revolution. Himanen (who I don't know) traces its roots, and perhaps more importantly, where it can take us. This is very important. If journalists, CEO's and others would read this book carefully, they might get ahead of the Net Revolution for once, instead of scrambling continuously to figure out where the world is going. If you want to know, this is a good place to start. It is also a very noble endeavor to finally give the hackers their due in the evolution of the modern world. It's not a big dense read either, which it easily could have been. It is a small book and moves quickly. It's ideas are accessible, and very, very convincing.

I've never read a clearer, more erudite, more persuasive demolition of the old Protestant Work Ethic than Pekka Himanen's essay in this book. And that clarity comes from being part of a new constituency - the hacker community - who are redefining what it is to be a passionate, active, creative, tool-wielding human being (ie, it's much more than just being a "worker"). And rather than the Hacker Ethic being the usual pizza-stained celebration of digital anarchism you find in hacker commentary, Himanen begins to construct a real and tangible politics out of the self-organising energies of hackerdom. What might the hacker ethic mean for how we build educational institutions, as communities of inquiry rather than job factories? For how we generate technological innovation, in ways that don't always depend on the furies of the market? For how we might provide social services amongst ourselves, rather than waiting for politicians and bureaucrats to deliver? I suppose the only problem I have - and it's one I'm trying to answer with my own project, The Play Ethic (on the web) is this: why do we need to keep describing unalienated human productivity and creativity (which is what hackerdom, and other forms of modern behaviour, are) as "work"? Isn't this the last legacy of Calvin and Knox, still shaping our minds through controlling our vocabulary? Why not call it "play", and be done with it - that's play as defined by Sartre, "that action we do when we apprehend that we are truly free": or Schiller's, meaning that activity we do when we are (as adults) "fully human"? Play also extends beyond the hacker community (still, as Pekka admits, predominantly male), and touches upon all the other "arts of living" that evade the patriarchal work ethic - in emotions, parent-child relationships, New Age spirituality, gender androgyny, ecological sensibilities. There is also a whole world of non-Christian theologies and traditions out there which place human creativity at their core, which could have been mentioned. (And what about Harold Bloom's cry for an American gnosticism in Omens of Millenium? That's just waiting for Richard Stallman and his cultic robes!) But hell, that's the book *I'm* writing... In the meantime, The Hacker Ethic is the worst news that the New Economy's work ethic could ever have - which means, the best for all us. Put a copy on your pal's desk: the one with the nervous twitch and the grey pallor. And watch the passion come back into his/her face.

Who IS this guy? I bought this for Torvalds and Castells, but Pekka Himanen's essay is stunning. If he makes a bit much of the Significance of the new ethic that's emerged, fair enough -- what's really mind-blowing here is his argument about why we're all hardwired to think about time and work the way we do -- especially time. The internal rhythms of our life are a cultural inheritance it's hard to get perspective on, and this guy puts our values in a big-picture historical context that's -- phew! -- pretty staggering.