117 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
117 lines
6.9 KiB
Plaintext
THE HACKER PAPERS (PSYCHOLOGY TODAY AUG. '80)
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DRAWN FROM THE STANFORD UNIVERSITY
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LOW OVERHEAD TIME-SHARING SYSTEM(LOTS)
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FROM: G. GANDALF (Kenneth Peter)
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TO: BULLETIN BOARD
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SUBJECT:ESSAY ON HACKING
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Dedicated to all my friends at LOTS who will live their lives in a alien
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culture surrounded by humanity, and to Ernest, who was too human for it.
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As much as an essay, this is a story. It is a true story of people paying
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$9,000 a year to lose elements of their humanity. It is a story of the breaking
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of wills and of people. It is a story of addictions, and of misplaced values.
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In a large part, it is my own story.
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There is no one field in particular in academia that has a monopoly on
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production of single-interest people, and this practice can exist almost
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anywhere. There is the political power seeker, all-consumed by climbing up the
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bureaucratic rungs. There is the stereotyped pre-med, ignoring all but his MCAT
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scores. There is the compulsive artist or writer, forever lost in his work.
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Narrowness is widespread. But there is one field that seems to be more
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consistent in this practice. This essay, rooted in personal and painful
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experience, is about the people in computer science.
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In the middle of Stanford University there is a large concrete- and-glass
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building filled with computer terminals. When one enters this building through
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the glass doors, one steps into a different culture. Fifty people stare at
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terminal screens. Fifty faces connected to 50 bodies, connected to 50 sets of
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fingers that pound on 50 keyboards ultimately linked to a computer. If you go
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further inside, you can discover the true addicts: the members of the
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Establishment. These are the people who spend their lives with computers and
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fellow "hackers". These are the members of a subculture so foreign to most
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outsiders that it not only walls itself off but is walled off, in turn, by those
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who cannot understand it. The wall is built from both sides at once.
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These people deserve a description. In very few ways do they seem average.
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First, they are all bright, so bright, in fact, that they experienced social
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problems even before they became interested in computers. Second, they are
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self-contained. Their entire social existence usually centers around one
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another. Very, very few remain close to their families. Very, very few
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associate much with anyone who is not at least partially a member of the hacking
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group. While they do sometimes enjoy entertainment unrelated to their field, it
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is almost always with fellow hackers. Third, all aspects of their existence
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reinforce one another. They go to school in order to learn about computers,
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they work at jobs in programming and computer maintenance, and they lead their
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social lives with hackers. Academically, socially, and in the world of cash,
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computers are the focus of their existence.
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The hacker will probably not strongly disagree with what has been said so far.
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But he will ask the question, "So what?" The answer is: in creating a
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subculture and isolating it, we are destroying the chance that computers might
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be used wisely as an integral part of our society. We are precluding the human
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values so necessary for the wise application of this technological achievement.
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The most brilliant young minds at our top universities are learning how to play
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with multi-million dollar toys first, and how to utilize them constructively
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second.
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Even if we ignore the costs to society as a whole, we have to look at the
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costs to the people involved. The computer is a modifier of personalities. It
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is highly addictive. People who gain this addiction for a period of several
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months tend never to give it up. And the symptoms are very sad.
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The first thing to go is other academic interests. Basically what occurs is
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that the hackers motivation to challenge themselves in any field not directly
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linked to computers gradually disint- egrates. On the level of grades,
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straight-A students tacitly accept C's in noncomputer courses. On the level of
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actual learning, the same students shut off outside subjects even more
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completely than their grades would indicate. This is common in many areas of
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specialization, but nothing compares with the incredible consumption of computer
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science students for computer science courses, and their non-chalant attitude
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toward every other class.
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The second thing to go is a normal living pattern. Eating and sleeping are
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completly rearranged to fit the addiction. The typical hacker thinks nothing of
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eating one meal a day and subsisting on junk food, or of sleeping from 4 a.m.
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to noon almost every day of the week. Families are soon disregarded, to an
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extent uncommon even when one considers the separtion that generally occurs in
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college. It is simply that the parents of hackers are ignorant of the
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subculture and cannot relate.
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The third thing to go is a balanced social life. The hackers' narrowness and
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strange schedule simply compound the social problems they experienced before
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hackerdom. Soon, no one except a hacker has the capability to understand other
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hackers. No one except a hacker will go out with other hackers. No one except
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a hacker can talk to another hacker.
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The forth and final thing that happens is also the saddest. The personality
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of the hacker shifts, in order to permanently adjust to the new social
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conditions. Emotions always hurt before so they are effectively isolated.
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Relations with nonhackers become strained, so why force the effort? It is so
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much easier just to accept social rejection and isolation, and to do it with a
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spirit of camraderie that's shared by the rest of the subculture.
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An essay should make an attempt to resolve the problem it points out. In this
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case, the pointing may be enough, or at least enough to do whatever can be done.
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I know from personal experience what a trauma it can be. I was one of the top
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10 among several thousand LOTS users last spring for the amount of time I spent
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here. I have watched people close to me undergo the transformation. I narrowly
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escaped it.
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The tragedy is that I am so involved in piecing my personality and social life
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back together that I think I have learned very little about how to prevent this
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from happening in the first place. I am lucky. I will go on to some sort of a
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balanced life (although my hacker friends will laugh at me, since, to them, my
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involvment was never serious enough to make me one of them). Weak-willed
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people, people with unstable social lives, people in formative stages of their
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lives, should not become involved in computer science. It should be left until
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they are truly able to make decisions and be aware of all the consequences.
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Computers are most often used by people who start when they are immature. This
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is what causes the single-minded addiction. This is what takes some of the
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brightest and most capable minds in college today and turns them to narrowness.
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