The PC was presented as a "revolution'' that would empower individuals, in the workplace as well as in society. It was supposed to bring about greater social equality and keep power under scrutiny. Hackers, and their values of technical prowess, disdain for authority and individual freedom were hailed as the heroes of this coming revolution. Thirty years down the line, we find ourselves in Surveillance Capitalism, a literal dystopia where our every move, online or offline, is tracked, catalogued, stored forever and sold at auction across the world. Instead, those who should have brought about a revolution have either become the ruling elite in the GAFAM occult Leninist experiment, or its useful idiots. It appears that ethics was never an inherent hacker value, rather a personal value of some hackers. If we value social good at all, we must recognise that techical prowess without ethics is dangerous, and that being a hacker per se does not matter.

1. Hackers
Don’t
Matter
Talk 4218
@IHC2018
DataKnightmare

2. What’s A Hacker, Anyway?
●
Cambridge English
a person who is skilled in the use of computer systems
●
Merriam-Webster
an expert at programming and solving problems with a computer
●
Oxford English
an enthusiastic and skilful computer programmer or user
●
Urban Dictionary
●
a person skilled with the use of computers that uses his talents to gain
knowledge

3. Jargon File
●
hacker ethic: n.
1.The belief that information-sharing is a powerful
positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to
share their expertise by writing open-source code and
facilitating access to information and to computing
resources wherever possible.
2.The belief that system-cracking for fun and exploration
is ethically OK as long as the cracker commits no theft,
vandalism, or breach of confidentiality

4. To sum it up
Professionally
●
passion-driven
●
world through tech
●
“Just Do It”
●
info libertarian
●
status conscious
Socially
●
challenged
●
disrespect of norms
●
individualist
●
self-centred
●
selective attention
...a keyboard cowboy

5. What else?
A gifted, male teenager

6. Myth
Hackers are heroes of the Revolution

8. In the Beginning,
Hackers. Weren’t. Cool.

9. Careers before the ‘10s
Sales:
1.Junior acct
2.Area Mgr
3.Mktg Dir
4.CEO
Finance
1.Admin Asst
2.Int. Auditor
3.Admin Dir
4.CEO
ICT
1.Jr Prog
2.Senior Prg
3.Senior Prg
4.Contractor

15. Then capitalism happened.
Gentrification ensued.

18. Inconvenient Truth/1
Cowboys are a libertarian trope.
So are hackers.

19. Inconvenient Truth/2
Hackers built surveillance capitalism.
Because it was cool and fuck lusers.

21. Inconvenient Truth/3
Tech is now a religion.

23. Where we are today
●
Tech as religion (data “science” anybody?)
●
Ageism
●
Techno-classism
●
Solutionism/Transhumanism
●
Financial speculation (aka blockchain)
Hackers as useful idiots of the right-wing

25. Repeat After me…
Social problems aren’t solved by technology.
Applies. To. Everything.

26. Tech won’t save us
●
Surveillance
capitalism
●
Reactionary drift
●
Global warming
●
Overpopulation
●
Idiocracy
●
Death…
no Mars shuttle,
no transcendence,
no hack*
out of this shit.
*Also possibly no way out altogether.

27. If all you have
is a hammer
Everything looks
like a nail.
Technology
is a hammer.
Hackers don’t matter.
Citizens do.

28. Thank you.
Questions?
DataKnightmare@[Twitter, Mastodon, Spreaker, Patreon]
CC-BY-SA 4.0 Walter Vannini
“Breaking Free of Screens version 1&2” ©2009 Andy Singer, used with permission