The Hacker Mindset
Image credit: AT&T Tech Channel - Cliff Stoll: Good Science
First, there comes excruciating pain. Suddenly, an eye blinding flash travels across his eyes. Look at him. He finally gazed outside the womb. He is now a small fraction of this world and all of its complications. Where will this child go? Just how will reality shape him? Will he break and succumb to despair, or regrow into an even more resilient, mature human? As the mother cries in joy, his little neurons start to fire little sparks of data that resonate all across his brain from hemisphere to hemisphere. And they do so very quickly. With a sheer speed of 100 meters per second. His brain has millions if not billions of connections! That is not a super computer. That is a human.
Before his parents know it, he is already learning his first ABCs and doing basic mathematics. A few years pass, and he starts developing new emotions. More years pass and he is capable of deep abstract thought. Curiosity and questions are like fuel and oxygen. Waiting for the little spark to complete the job and burst into a violent reaction of fire. For knowledge. A new experiment proves to be as exciting as a new question. Forcing the child to push the limits of his brain and make connections based on his experience, or lack thereof.
This is how I like to describe hackers. We lack hackers. Passionate people. People that will pass knowledge down the generations with real excitement. And you cannot imagine THE BEST of such people until you see them in action. If you scout through the internet carefully, you might notice them. Here are some that I cannot help myself but to share. For they have deeply impacted my thinking:
“Hackers”. I am not referring to cyber security specialists, consultants, or attackers, although they do constitute a big portion of individuals with such a mentality. I am referring to people that wonder and explore. What hackers used to be defined as before media acted out with its usual “drama, drama, drama.. drama” move and pictured us as “the bad guys”. The bad guys are not hackers. They are criminals. End of the story.
Why do we lack them? Because people are not flawless. We make mistakes, even when we think we are doing the right thing. A statement kills curiosity. It closes your options and puts you on a single track. Some parents do that. Some teachers do that. Which can have profound effects on the child. Children need questions. They are born to be curious. If the environment models them to be silent, shut up, and not question about the system or statement in question, how will they ever familiarize themselves with it? That is why extreme patience is needed when introducing somebody to a topic. Especially children.
Is there a way out of such closed thinking? Perhaps. For me it was FOSS (Free and Open-Source Software). I no longer am tied to a proprietary system that I detest. I am free to use my computer however I like. Which pushes me to understand my own system better and in more depth. It enables me to think in new ways and make my computer do funny things. Even if impractical, it still is.. fun. The reason behind it also lies in data protection and privacy. But that is another discussion. For you, the entry point might also reside in FOSS, or maybe mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, etcetera. At the end of the day, all major subjects are fundamentally interlinked. Curiosity will push you outside of your own field if you just let it do so. That is when you will realize that every subject has a profound meaning and beauty.
The greatest twist will come when you discover something new on your own that is interlinked with what you know you LOVE doing. But that resides inside a completely different field that you remember hating because of a past experience - like school.
This is what I learned in my concluding years of adolescence. I now like to think optimistically about the coming generations. Let’s take care and be welcoming of our future pioneers. Let’s respect the work of the ones who came before us. They are after all, the reason why we are here.