{"id":971,"date":"2017-02-08T19:01:25","date_gmt":"2017-02-08T19:01:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/?p=971"},"modified":"2017-02-08T19:01:25","modified_gmt":"2017-02-08T19:01:25","slug":"we-are-as-gods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/2017\/02\/08\/we-are-as-gods\/","title":{"rendered":"We are as gods"},"content":{"rendered":"
Before I can continue with this post\u2026I need to apologize to the universe for being a spoiled little b*tch. Sorry if that offends anyone, but seriously, my current research\u00a0on the birth of hacker culture, politics of programming, tinkering and mass making\u00a0has left me saying \u201choly f*ck\u201d\u2026mind blown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n<\/header>\n

Being a creature driven by curiosity, discovery, and exploration<\/strong> I\u2019ve been completely unaware of the affordances of living in THIS\u00a0age of technological innovation. My recent reading has given\u00a0me an immense appreciation for the fact that this culture of hacking, making, caring, and sharing has not always existed. Oh, how I have taken so much for granted! The work of preceding \u201cnetwork entrepreneurs\u201d has made accessible the\u00a0means to pursue knowledge\u2026which is my\u00a0fundamental reason for living (or, if this sounds too extreme, for my pursuits\u00a0as a designer).<\/p>

Admittedly, I have held\u00a0very narrow, unsavory, and criminal connotation of hacking. How unfortunate\u2026for these ideas are so\u00a0clearly the bridge I have been seeking to connect my back-to-the-land, resist-the-man, egalitarian worldview\u00a0to who I am as a designer in the time of ever emerging technological advances (many of which I so desire to resist). Need I say Stewart Brand is my new personal hero?<\/p>

Let me stop for a moment\u00a0and give credit to a classmate\u2026a profound conversation\u00a0with Dajana Nedic<\/strong>*shout out!*<\/em> has allowed me to connect the following ideas with my mind blowing moment of understanding.<\/p>

Hacking has a reputation\u00a0(often negative) only allotted to programmers. But what about DIY\u00a0hackers, life hackers and those of us striving for self-sufficiency through the continuous learning afforded to us via information communities?<\/strong>\u00a0When I needed to replace the siding of my house, when I had to change the oil in my car for the first time after my divorce, when I needed to understand\u00a0what depreciation meant when claiming a rental property on my taxes\u2026all I have needed is a computer, phone or tablet and the instruction is at my fingertips.\u00a0What liberation!<\/p>

The question I initially desired to propose in this writing was going to be: what is a new definition for hacking that embraces a broader, more positive context?<\/strong> But as I researched and pondered my own understanding (and with the help of wikepedia<\/a>) \u00a0I have written this definition:\u00a0The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming limitations as a means\u00a0to achieve novel and clever outcomes. Hacking is the term for the act of engaging in activities in a spirit of playfulness and exploration. The defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves, but the manner in which it is done\u00a0and whether it is something exciting and meaningful. It is simply a descriptor for those of us who are cleverly aware of the world in which we live.<\/p>

QUESTION TO CONSIDER: Is this definition relevant and\/or accurate and\/or missing anything?<\/strong><\/p>

So, progress, not perfection. Process over product. If I change\u00a0my understanding of hacking as a means to pursue knowledge and innovation, I can create a method for discovery:<\/p>

Step #1 >><\/strong> position myself in an area which I am struggling to understand
\nStep #2 >><\/strong> find a tiny spot\u00a0to start exploring \u2013 perhaps somewhere\u00a0I wasn\u2019t supposed to go
\nStep #3 >><\/strong> start deconstructing it, figuring out how and why it works
\nStep #4 >><\/strong> apply this knowledge to a new idea
\nStep #5 >><\/strong> make, create, evolve
\nStep #6 >><\/strong> make this new \u201cthing\u201d accessible, foster community, never hoard innovation<\/p>

As designers, we do this unconsciously. Perhaps hacking is simply a means of tackling problems in unexpected ways and being comfortable with ambiguity.<\/span> Again, mind blown<\/strong>.<\/p>

In Allison Parrish\u2019s Programming is Forgetting<\/em>, we begin to see the immense, potential opportunities of\u00a0hacking from a questioning point of view. When digging through information in our pursuit of understanding, we push aside so many elements, pieces and parts we deem useless\u00a0in that moment. What have we lost? What has been left out? How have we missed the opportunity of reflection on the knowledge of the experience? Are we\u00a0focused merely on the process of getting from A to B (i.e. the result, the digitized moment)?<\/p>

QUESTION TO CONSIDER: How might we embrace what was lost through forgetting, through throwing away and pushing aside, to create a new hacker culture?<\/strong><\/p>

And finally, on a sub-note and to honor my love of charting as a means to understanding, here is a visual way of understanding the how\u00a0\u201cStewart Brand shaped the climate that shifted the perception of computers from heartless and domineering to human and empowering\u201d (from Jay Cross, Internet Time Blog<\/a>):<\/p>

\"processing-chart-02\"<\/span><\/p>

READINGS REFERENCED:
\nThe Hacker Manifesto<\/em>\u00a0\u2013 The Mentor
\n<\/span><\/span>From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Steward Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Uptopianism \u2013<\/i>\u00a0Fred Turner
\nWhole Earth Catalog Purpose and Function<\/em>\u00a0\u2013Stewart Brand
\nProgramming is Forgetting<\/em> \u2013\u00a0Allison Parrish<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By changing my understanding of hacking as a means to pursue knowledge and innovation, I can create a method for discovery.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":983,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-971","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-now-now","entry-card--square"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/moshed_2017-1-8_13.59.52.gif","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p86O3z-fF","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=971"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":986,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/971\/revisions\/986"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/academics.design.ncsu.edu\/yesand\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}