> i'm not judging hacker's or coders or geeks. i don't give a flying fuck
> whether they do what they do because they are bored or lonely or psychotic
> or totally in love with code or selfless or egotistical. i'm talking
> about the conditions under which occupations move to professionalize. i'm
> pointing to the conditions that i believe make the occupation ripe for
> professionalization and it will be more so when the economy slows because
> the so-called monopoly on knowledge is not special. even physicians cannot
> muster such a monopoly and they hold people's lives in their hands. how do
> you suppose it has happened that they are increasingly under the thumb of
> accountants who tell them how to practice their trade?
>
> capitalists and their managerial lackeys will NOT put up with attitudes
> like those expressed by people who think they can extort capitalists. they
> don't like it. no one does,. capitalists, however, have the power, money,
> resources, and such to control things a lot more than geeks. therefore, if
> geeks want to fight to retain the good life they've achieved, they will
> have to organize. as i said, all major associations affiliated with IT
> have had the professionalization discussion for at least a decade now.
What about the de-professionalization of the workplace, attributed to the hacker. Take something simple like dress code. I work for an ancient manufacturing company. Very "old school", powerful old men in expensive dark suits running things, etc. Two years ago they instituted a new dress code, business casual all year. Do you think this had anything to do with losing sales talent to competitors without dress codes? Of course not, this is hackerdom breaking the rules, and the company changing the rules. A simple example of course, but it illustrates how the world is changing in subtle ways.
I think I understand what you are trying to say, and certainly there is evidence of SOME of that kind of thing. Take, for example, the ousting of Space Rogue by @Stake, and the refusal to hire Phiber Optik because of his felony record. Certainly in the latter case (the former is likely leading to legal action, so I've heard, so no details available for mass consumption) some hackers have circled their wagons to protect their business.
But I think this is not the norm, and in the long run people like the L0pht when they "sell out" are going to drift off into a world of wealthy obscurity. They will cease being important to the advancing wave, and others will still be moving forward. Not getting that fat job with @Stake and being adored by the media has dick to do with being a hacker, and that's what ac has been saying and I think you may not be seeing how fundamental of a distinction that is.
You forwarded the post from Sinster, and the reactions here are as I expected. Hackers aren't going to organise their labour because we don't organise anything, we are agents of disorganisation. As Woodchuck wrote (if you've never read his rant about "what it is to be a hacker" then please ask him for it) we are the chaotic elements, the Markoff Chaneys in this world. I believe you, surprisingly, are failing to see the giant distinction between a code monkey and a hacker. The code monkeys SHOULD organise, if they want to keep their fat salaries, because you are damn right this boom is going to recede. But those aren't the hackers, they're the ankle biters, and that's fine, someone has to sit in a cube all day and write code for some random object used in the next SAP or Peoplesoft, but that isn't me, no thanks.
Bang, now I'm sure your thinking "there he goes again with the us vs. them, proving my point", right? The difference between what I'm doing and what you think I'm doing is that I'm only recognizing a distinction, not enforcing one. Anyone, everyone should be a hacker, and ac has said that better than I can. That's the point. Newbie flames on dc-stuff are not as significant as I think you make them out to be - newbie flames are a tradition, as are clueless flames. dc-stuff has answered and continues to answer technical questions in our flamboyant style. The whole ethos behind hacker clubs and mailing lists and conventions is the tradition of information exchange, and that isn't changing, despite what we see of people like the L0pht. They got greedy, and I don't fault them, there are certainly bigger fish to fry. But a list like dc-stuff shares all kind of information - don't you consider it significant that we RARELY discuss hacking, except wihtin a political or philosophical context? A question about Russian Literature gets excellent response, and leads to an interesting thread. We do flame the "how can I hack into this guy's windoze pc" questions because that imbecilic shit just doesn't belong, just like I'd get flamed here if I started spamming the list with my inflatable doll ads, or something. It is off-topic, basically. The flames chase away the script kiddies and leave those who just made an honest mistake becuase without reading for 6 weeks there is no way to know wtf dc-stuff IS about.
Ac and I both have physics degrees, and I think that is the norm amongst hackers. Not physics degrees of course, but any degree EXCEPT a comp sci degree, if a degree at all. I have no professional certifications, those are for the code monkeys and the microserfs, because they need them to professionalize, as you would call it, and seperate themselves from the totally clueless, so as to command that high salary. But those aren't the hackers, the hackers are few and far between in the corporate world. My company has three people that I would say are hackers, out of an IT staff of hundreds. We DON'T command the highest salaries but we do have a HUGE influence over the technical direction of the company. This isn't strictly a matter of pure knowledge it is a matter of understanding the tools and having programmed our brains to use the tools to their maximum benefit. My friend at work said "most people who think they know IT just don't get it - the internet isn't changing business, it is changing people". Right there, that's the point.
We don't care about the underbid immigrants of the marketplace because this isn't a matter of money, and that drive my non-hacker friends nuts - why I don't move to a major city and change my income from ~140K (NYC dollars - I really live in rural PA where cost of living is 50% of NYC) to 500K, but they just don't get it. I don't want to be one of those people that everyone THINKS we are talking about. It is a choice I make, and its different than the choice someone like Mudge has made. Not better, just different. I take my comparatively low salary and work in an environment of freedom and challange, because I need those things much more than I need a house in the Hamptons. So Sinster was right, we don't need to organise to protect us from them, because we are just riding this wave and don't care where it takes us. Breaking and disorganising, remember?!? If this wave crashes and I can't live doing IT then I'll do whatever becomes interesting, something like neurophysics or genetic engineering or something, who cares? The point is the real hackers will reinvent themselves; 10 years ago we couldn't get employed being a hacker and there were still hackers. Hacking ISN'T an occupation, code monkey or Microserf is an occupation. We reinvent oursleves everytime we communicate. What did Leary say - "you can be anyone the next time around".
I just re-read that and I believe it sounds very egotistical and full of multitudes of swinging dicks, but I don't think I can change anything and still make my points. My only disclaimer is that becoming a hacker has no prerequisits, no criteria, no credentials. It is a state of mind, an attitude, and almost a way of life. It is a kind of auto-programming of the mind, and it can't be taught in a school or simply read about in a book. I don't know how to react to the people at work, fresh out of college with their comp sci degrees or PC tech diplomas, who say "how can I learn what you know"? I can't answer that, I don't believe I have amassed some archive of arcana or anything. I can't even say "go install linux at home", because it is much more than running a hip OS. I usually mumble something like I've written above, and I get wierd looks. That isn't the answer they want, they want to know which college clases to take and good certifications for their career. I don't know that shit, I don't care about that shit. What I do is off their chart, it isn't one of the possible answers, and I think you, Kel, are having the same kinda problem. And you can interview and work in the professional side of hackerdom, the IT security world, but until you've reprogrammed your mind to be a hacker your not going to understand it - just like how a two dimensional creature thinks a cube is just a square - you only see what you mind lets you see. Computers and the internet are only the current playground of the hacker, because they bring forth new possibilities, and are extremely cheap. We've had hackers as long as we've had civilisation, although right now hacking the networked computer has become as natural as riding a bicycle, and the at which pace we are moving is a frenzy.
Some days I wish our world wouldn't have become so high profile, and so common. If this wave crashes, I suspect there will be many spiritual casualties amongst those who tried to apply the rules in our world to the rest of the world. There's a lot more to break and disorganise before those kinds of transitions will be painless.
Matt
-- Matt Cramer <cramer at voicenet.com> http://www.voicenet.com/~cramer/ I want peace on earth and good will toward men.
-Erwin "Whistler" Emory We are the United States Government. We don't do that sort of thing.
-Bernard Abbott