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>Well, sure, there's some of that. But this is a point about intentions
>and motivations, and so, as is usually the case with messy entities
>like us humans, things are all over the map.
probably a good idea for you to have applied your crit of me to your own claims re intentions and motivations. your generalization was equally unidimensional.
moreover, if you really are interested in doing sociology than you can say something more than simply about individual level intentions and motivations, and speak of group/organization/institutions/cultural level phenom.
in which case, we are speaking of norms, taken-for-granted assumptions, values which are publicly defended when challenged, deviances which are punished when committed (whereas others aren't) and so forth. these are observed and measured rather differently than are intentions/motivations and no one has to pretend to have or engage in methods that allow access to those intentions and motivatios that individuals carry around in their heads and have to give the sociologist access to in some way.
i have no objection to painting a more complex picture. indeed, it is why i jumped in.
i do think we can speak of an ethos, of a set of ethos (plural form?), of norms, of hacker culture, and so forth and that these can be characterized in fairly general ways.
how so?
-say in the same way someone might speak of uhhhhhhhhh ....yeah....that's right...."wall streeters"--
or "leftists" or "anarchists" or 'economists' or "libertarians" or "conservatives," or the "evil military" etc
who have unique and complex individual level motivations, preferences, needs and desires but who live and work and play in a cultural milieu which can be characterized, typified, and, yes, observed. that's what it means to say that we study social processes, practices and structures and *never* individuals (unless you're are "that" kind of sociologist).
i do have a BIG objection to the unreflexive claim that the hacker ethos is somehow a new and special ethos and that somehow the practice of giving away code has to do with the givingness and unusualness of the hacker/hacker culture -- or even the better characterization of it as about people just loving what they do.
it is not that i deny those things. i wouldn't since the habits and values pointed to are human, characteristics that can be found among graphics artists, bakers, economists, and engineers.
it smells vewy vewy fishy elmer, particularly if you know *anything* about the history and development of professions.
all of the occupations we consider professions in a sociological sense share a few things in common. professions are, sociologically speaking, occupations that are politically organized enough to ensure a monopoly on knowledge. that knowledge is seen as sufficiently obscure and difficult. but in and of itself it is not really that obscure and difficult. it is *made* that way.
most of the time, we don't see the political operations within which that knowledge came to be and continues to be monopolized. most people buy into the mystification process whereby that knowledge is just taken for granted as the knowledge rightly belonging to the few or knowledge that is so difficult to obtain that those who have it are rightly justified in maint. that monopoly and in accruing greater rewards (status, money) for possessing that knowledge.
invariably, another thing that characterizes all professions is the claim that the people involved do it for the sheer love of doing it. they are performing some sort of public service or good, ultimately. they might be well-compensated for it, but that is, well , precisely because they do it for something "beyond" money, as the myth goes. they do it for the love of their fellow humans or for the good of an abstract "society" (or something like that).
notice, of course, a couple of things.
1. this "giving" for the love of the "science" or "knowledge" involved or for the benefit of society is rewarded and oooooo'd and ahhhhh'd about in predominantly male occupations.
2. occupations in which people are less able to convincingly argue and politically organize to promulgate the claim that they do it for the abstract "greater good" or love of the science are not compensated as well as those occupations that can do so. if they are better compensated, then there are generally accorded less prestige -- as say are "managers" who earn beaucoup bucks, but a definitely not seen as people who do it for much other than the income.
my proposition is that we might do well to look at hackers/geeks/coders/etc in the same way we sociologically looked at other professions who exert a monopoly on knowledge. doing so, i think, would show how these practices aren't exactly inexplicable and not just about the sheer joy of code. there is something there, i don't deny that.
however, you have to admit that there is something *very* odd about this claim. for one thing, it is continaully upheld as unique to hackers and yet you'd think, listening to you two and countless other i've read on this, that no other occ. has such sentiments.
for another thing, it gets whipped out *too* ritualistically. there si something going on there.
there is something odd about this claim, at least when you come at from where i do with a consideration of the history of other professions in which a key political process involved in the creation of a monopoly on knowledge.
others love doing what they do in the same way as hackers describe loving what they do. but i *am* a sociologist and utterly refuse to presume that this is all there is to it, since i *know* that many other people love what they do beyond all external rewards they get for doing so. and i *rarely* see any other group whip this credential out of their back pocket and demand to be ooooooooooo'd and aahhhhhhhhhhhh'd at for it.
kelley