The hackers' main concern was challenging the idea of technological expertise and authority. The hacker culture was a subculture within 1960s counterculture. The hacker culture is placed in the context of 1960s youth culture when American youth culture challenged the concept of capitalism and big, centralized structures. Willingness to work right through the night on a single programming problem are widely cited as features of the early 'hacker' computer culture." "Exceptional single-mindedness and determination to keep plugging away at a problem until the optimal solution had been found are well-documented traits of the early hackers. Where protestant ideals and mannerisms became popular.Īccording to Kirkpatrick's The Hacker Ethic: According to Kirkpatrick, author of The Hacker Ethic, the "computer plays the role of God, whose requirements took priority over the human ones of sentiment when it came to assessing one's duty to others." The notion of moral indifference between hackers characterized the persistent actions of computer culture in the 1970s and early 1980s. Protestant sectarians emphasized individualism and loneliness, similar to hackers who have been considered loners and nonjudgemental individuals. The hacker culture has been compared to early Protestantism.
I would not want to completely deny all connection between hacking and views on ethics. hacking tends to lead a significant number of hackers to think about ethical questions in a certain way. Hacking is not primarily about an ethical issue. Some hackers care about ethics-I do, for instance-but that is not part of being a hacker, it is a separate trait. Just because someone enjoys hacking does not mean he has an ethical commitment to treating other people properly. Īnd states more precisely that hacking (which Stallman defines as playful cleverness) and ethics are two separate issues: The hacker ethic refers to the feelings of right and wrong, to the ethical ideas this community of people had-that knowledge should be shared with other people who can benefit from it, and that important resources should be utilized rather than wasted.
Its founder, Richard Stallman, is referred to by Steven Levy as "the last true hacker".
The free software movement was born in the early 1980s from followers of the hacker ethic. However, the elements of the hacker ethic were not openly debated and discussed rather they were implicitly accepted and silently agreed upon. The hacker ethic was described as a "new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream".