Hacker’s lament


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But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s
technobrain ever take a look behind the eyes of the Hacker? Did you ever
wonder what made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded
him?

I am a Hacker, enter my world….

Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most
of the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…

Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a comupter. Wait a second,
this is cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake it’s
because I screwed it up. Not because it doesn’t like me…
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I’m a smart ass…
Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…

— Hacker Manifesto (The Mentor)

Have you really wondered how the hackers are shaped? What made him tick and what shaped him? And of course I am not talking about criminals. Hackers are not criminals! Criminals and cyber criminals are just that, criminals or crackers. Hackers are the good guys. Guys who move the world forward. Guys who made internet, web and many other things possible are hackers. These great achievements were possible because of a particular mindset and value systems. Here is how I would see that value system:

Freedom of information is freedom for people

Hackers fight for freedom of information. Everyone should have access to all information that they need or would require. Why is this important? Because if people have all the information, they could make informed and right decisions. Also, a free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity. Noone wants to reinvent the wheel. If it is invented once, this information with all supplementary information how to reproduce it, should be easily available and accessible to everyone. However, hackers do not fight for the freedom of information, just for the sake of information. Free and accessible information make people free. If they have all the information, they cannot be tricked to think or believe in something wrong. They will be free to make the best decision based on the evaluated information. Because of this, sometimes government are scared of hackers, but governments should work in the best interest of its people. And having information and freedom to act based on them should be in the people’s best interest.

Strive for openness and truth

Hackers are striving for openness and truth. They are fighting for the truth. If they know the truth they will openly tell it. Also, they will openly provide their work and knowledge. Share it. Share the opinions. Some may think that they are sometimes rude, but it is not out of rudeness. It is just openness and truth. We do not care about diplomacy or what in which moment is good to say or not to say. We will always say what we think. Give arguments for our opinions and even acknowledge rightfully that we were wrong if someone has more valid arguments.

Strive to enable people to achieve more

Humankind is the greatest thing we know of. And it is evolving. Mankind achieved great things and in this technology era it could achieve more then ever. Hackers are here to help. Hackers are enabling people to do more, by providing open and free software, information and knowledge. We can say that two greatest inventions of 20th century were made and shaped by hackers – web and the internet. We strive to educate and enable people to be more productive, free and create their own dreams.

Cannot stand seeing broken things

When something is broken, it should be fixed! We can’t stand broken things. Broken things are bad! We either fix them, if we can. Here we are doers, not just spectators. Hackers should not be spectators, they should act. They are the active citizens. If there is no way we can fix it, we let the owner know that he has broken thing and how to fix it. Sometimes we have to make some owners fix their stuff. There is no space in this world for broken things. We have zero tolerance for broken technology, but also for broken society, which lives in lies and deception. Hackers actively seeks to improve and fix all that can be fixed or improved.

Decentralize and conquer

Ideas are such a wonderful things. You can share it and now it won’t disappear when you don’t talk about it anymore. It lives with all the people that knows about the idea. It becomes decentralized. However, a lot of things can be decentralized. Economy, democracy, discussion, collaboration, code and many other things could be decentralized. In our community we made a lot of effort to decentralize things so there is no single point of failure.  Also, decentralization helps democracy in our communities and supports difference and different point of views. We strive for true democracy, where every interested member of the community would have freedom to speak their mind equally and his or her voice and vote would be heard equally to others.

Make a world more pleasant place to live in 

When we sum up all the things said here, our main aim is to make a world more pleasant, safe and truthful place to live in. Our values encourage and support self development of both individuals and communities and we wish we can provide tools that will enable people to achieve more and live in the best possible world. We fight all these dark forces that made all the bad, evil and unpleasant things on Earth.

 

Yes, I am a criminal.  My crime is that of curiosity.  My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto.  You may stop this individual, but you can’t stop us all…  after all, we’re all alike.

— The Mentor

Born in Bratislava, Slovakia, lived in Belgrade, Serbia, now living in Manchester, UK, and visitng the world. Nikola is a great enthusiast of AI, natural language processing, machine learning, web application security, open source, mobile and web technologies. Looking forward to create future. Nikola has done PhD in natural language processing and machine learning at the University of Manchester where he worked for 2 years. In 2020, Nikola moved to Berlin and works in Bayer Pharma R&D as a computational scientist.

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