The values of hacker ethic in the new century

Hacker ethics arguably have had as much influence on the last few years of the 21st century as Protestant work ethics have shaped the spirit of Capitalism. Many an entrepreneur, inventor or maintainer of some of the cornerstones of modern society were greatly influenced or completely guided by hacker ethics.

Freedom, for instance, is one such value which can be found in many of the technologies we use today, or which defines one of several famous dichotomies from which there are still no clear winners. One such dichotomy is the iOS versus Android battle, which once seemed lost to the hordes of proprietary software married to Digital Rights Restriction Management wrapped in a walled garden of curated content of Apple Inc., but nowadays it seems more and more like the open-source (if not entirely Free Software), free-for-all and laissez-faire Android alternative has been winning this battle, which is still far from over.

Hackers' approach to money and profit has had a tremendous influence on the current world - from the open standards that enable the web to be what it is today to Free/Libre software to producing content for free for projects like Wikipedia. Money is good and no hacker (ok, few hackers) is preaching Communism, but a challenge is much more important to a hacker - the paycheck he gets for cracking those challenges is just the icing in the cake. Also, "the right way" is not something that appeals to hackers much - "burn the manual, lets have an intellectually stimulating debate about this" has a lot more value. It's this painting outside the lines habit that has given us some amazingly weird stuff like location sharing services or ephemeral chat tools.

Caring is an interesting quirk of hackers which has been migrating to the mainstream through one of the least predictable of sources - hipsters. Those cappuccino-sipping, Apple loving, fashion-oriented skinny people who are otherwise the antithesis of hackers are great at caring and passion. While Gen-Xers at this age were fighting for BMWs and high-rise apartments and cocaine, hispters buy local, ride their bikes to work, integrate into the community, subvert capitalism, work smart and not more. I almost feel disgusted with myself for saying this, but hipsters are direct descendants of hacker culture.

Last but not least, network ethic is now a basic tenet of society. You're not an island anymore, what with your constantly connected smartphone and smartwatch and who-knows how many social network accounts. People no longer expect news to come from the media (and the media is suffering dearly for its nearsightedness in recognizing this trend) and now trust the free flow of information between peers more than anything. This distrust of established top-down hierarchies is and will remain shaping society for years to come.

Stay tuned.