A book version of the A hacker manifesto of McKenzie Wark has been published recently. The latest online version (5.1) can be found here as html and as pdf here. First monday published an interview, which partly has been conducted, because of this official publishing. To explore the term of ‘hacking’ they link back to an elder text of Gisle Hannemyr on first monday entitled “Technology and Pleasure: Considering Hacking Constructive”:
“The emergence of hackers as an identifiable group coincides closely in time with the introduction of various Taylorist methods in software development. Many of the most skilled programmers resented what was happening to their trade. One of the things that characterized the early hackers, was their almost wholesale rejection of Taylorist principles and practices,…
… to lead over to McKenzie’s recent remarks:
The word “surreal” is useful – it refers to what is in addition, over and above the real. It’s another word for the virtual, for things that are real but not actual. Things that can be but at the moment aren’t.
I argue that the term “hackers,” in the broad sense, includes anyone who is a custodian of the virtual, anyone who works on charting the virtual and bringing things into existence, ranging from science to poetry. I think all of us who try to live up to that goal have a shared sense that it is – or can be – a good thing.
I argue that the term “hackers,” in the broad sense, includes anyone who is a custodian of the virtual, anyone who works on charting the virtual and bringing things into existence, ranging from science to poetry. I think all of us who try to live up to that goal have a shared sense that it is – or can be – a good thing.
