124 lines
7.7 KiB
Markdown
124 lines
7.7 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: Hackers
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layout: post
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redirect_from: "/blog/hackers/"
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---
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*The following is a non-fiction essay I wrote for my* ENGH 396: Intro to
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Creative Writing *class. I decided to write about my experience with
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discovering and getting involved with the eccentric community of hackers that I
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met since the past two internships I've had at [Valti](https:/www.valti.com/)
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and [Humbug](https://humbughq.com/) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Seeing as it
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encapsulated what I've learned culturally since then, I decided to post it here
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as well.*
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Hackers -- not your malicious meddling Hollywood-style speed-typists -- but the
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type who sees a toaster and turns it into a computer capable of etching emails
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into the crispy surface of toast. Those who would create a programming language
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consisting exclusively of expletives and then use it to filter out offensive
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words from websites just for the irony. They would never steal a password or
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cause any harm -- unless, perhaps, you gave them a powerful rocket and a bad
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idea. Their curiosity leaves them with a burning desire to break all
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assumptions and to answer "what if" questions as if they were a challenge to
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their very existence.
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My personal foray within the realm of hackers began with Boston. I had snagged
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an internship with a startup called Valti started by a couple of Harvard
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students who wanted to create an online platform that enabled college students
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to exchange dresses. Startup businesses are dime a dozen in the hacker culture.
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With so many wild ideas going around, every once in a while a profitable one
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comes by. Hackers despise cubicles and big corporations, so starting their own
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company on their own rules is the usual course of action.
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While Harvard's snobby atmosphere put me off, MIT seemed to call out to the
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hacker within me. Now, MIT is arguably the birthplace of the hacker, so when I
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say that I was thrown into the thick of the hacker culture all at once, it is
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no over-exaggeration. This is the place where people would regularly discuss
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mathematical and computer science theories over a casual lunch with each other.
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Computer Science is the de facto "undecided" major at MIT. You would be
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hard-pressed to find a student who didn’t know their way around a Linux
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terminal. Now imagine the computer club of such a university.
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The Student Information Processing Board, or SIPB for short, was at least one
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such computer club of MIT that I began to get involved with. This club, which
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was established in the 60s, packaged their own operating system and distributed
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computing environment called Project Athena that was good enough that the
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university installed it on all of their computers. The members were laughably
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out of my league in terms of computer science experience; I would find myself
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regularly searching Wikipedia for every other word they would mention while in
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a heated discussion concerning some technology. But, what surprised me the most
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was not the depth of their knowledge, but the breadth; each of them seemed to
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have an unlimited capacity for various trivial tidbits of knowledge from the
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etymology of words to the physics of the universe. Being around that kind of
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intelligence was fascinating, while at the same time frustrating, since it was
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often hard to follow.
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Whenever I wasn't building the website for Valti, I was out in the city going
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to various meetups to meet people and learn about new upcoming technologies.
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This was a totally new world for me. Hackers didn't exist in high school, they
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were just those weird nerds in the computer classes. And, even at George Mason,
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there still wasn't the same atmosphere of ingenuity as in Boston that gave me
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the motivation to want to change the world. I had the feeling most CS students
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at Mason were only there for the degree just so they could go work at some
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boring government contractor in DC when they graduated. After seeing the hacker
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culture in Boston, that type of job seemed like death to me.
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Hackers, a world-wide amorphous group of people who enjoy discussing (and
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arguing) various topics, naturally congregate among sites like Slashdot,
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Reddit, and Hacker News (often abbreviated to HN -- hackers, much like the
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military, are fond of their abbreviations) to get quick syndicated news and to
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have large in-depth discussions in the comments. Locally, there are groups that
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meet to discuss certain technologies or set up spaces where hackers can easily
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build prototypes (usually referred to as "hackerspaces"). Unsurprisingly, the
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hubs for these local communities are usually centered around cities that are
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hosts to major computer science universities: San Fransisco, Boston, New York,
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etc.
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Their awareness of the languages they use and their fondness of breaking beyond
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the norm lends hackers a great affinity to the game of word play, and thus they
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have created their own lexicon of slang that borrows much from the jargon of
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computer science. "Foobar," "grok," "cruft," "distro," "kluge," "phreaking,"
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the words that are common knowledge among those already within the society put
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a barrier in front of those like me looking to understand the culture.
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Many of the students I met at MIT use a chat protocol called Zephyr as cross
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between email and instant messaging to communicate with each other. Zephyr was
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created in the 80’s as one of the first instant-messaging systems (the other,
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more popular protocol being IRC), and, because of the culture surrounding the
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program, it is still widely used at the university. "Zephyrisms" have developed
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over the years to aid in simplifying communication. For example, "==" is used
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to indicate agreement and "++" is used by what would probably be the equivalent
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to a "Like" on Facebook. Both can find their parallels as symbols used in many
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programming languages, the former for equality and the later for incrementing
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an integer by one. Other more obscure zephyrisms include "starking," or
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reviving an old thread of conversation, "prnf" which stands for "Pseudo-Random
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Neuron Firings", and "i, i" which would mean "I have no point here, I just like
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saying" and would usually prefix some snarky comment in reply to an otherwise
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serious thread of conversation (some people would just omit the "i, i" and put
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quotes around said snarky comment instead). Even though these zephyrisms seemed
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completely arbitrary to me when I first encountered them, after a while of use
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they came to me naturally, and I would even accidentally use them outside
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Zephyr to the confusion of my friends. It was easy to see how such conventions
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of speech developed originally.
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The Free Software Foundation (FSF), which advocates for free, open-source,
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non-proprietary software (free as in "free speech," not "free beer"), is based
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in Boston and is one of the focal points of the hacker culture. The president,
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Richard Stallman (who is often referred to as RMS), a big, heavily bearded
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fellow, is particularly legendary in the community. Being nearly militant about
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the goals of FSF, he refuses to use software that contains any proprietary code
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at all: no cellphone, only uses a laptop developed completely open-source,
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doesn’t use a browser to view the internet, and even refuses to use a key card,
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which makes it difficult for him to get into his office at MIT. Though often
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painfully stubborn about his ideas, he is the ultimate activist for hackers:
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making sure the government and big corporations do not misuse people's
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information or kill off the hacker culture.
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While nowadays I like to call myself an aspiring hacker, I’m not so sure I
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could ever match the intelligence and indestructible curiosity of those that I
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met in Boston. Perhaps it is their unique culture of constantly questioning the
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norm and striving for knowledge of the world around them that allows them to
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transcend into true hackerdom. Either way, I now know never to tell a hacker
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that something is impossible, because they will surely find a way to prove me
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wrong.
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