The Hacker Philosophy: A Reality Reprogramming Creed
Getting to know how a system works allows us to modify its usage and to transform it in ways initially considered as impossible.
Around the web we often hear about a hacker “philosophy”, referring to a credo behind the act of revealing and capitalizing those vulnerabilities held by informatics security structures. An activity that is not done with the purpose of gaining financial benefits or media attention, but as some sort of epic self-assigned mission of inverse reengineering. But, what can an informatics hacker teach us about the world that beats beyond the environment of our screens?
Regarding the hacker standpoint, Paul Buchheit, one of Google’s top programmers, proclaimed, “We’re often told that there are no shortcuts to success —that it’s all a matter of hard work and doing what we’re told. The hacking mindset takes the opposite approach: There are always shortcuts and loopholes. For this reason, hacking is sometimes perceived as cheating, or unfair, and it can be.”
One of the main aspects that distinguish a hacker from a traditional programmer is that the latter shapes and configures informatics networks, while the first takes the time to detect all of its vulnerabilities. Noticing how our reality is built, and understanding it as a series of conventions and learnt habits, will enable us to modify it and print it with our own protocols.
Is there something in your life that you dislike? Then stop procrastinating and try to learn how it actually works: you will discover, undoubtedly, something new about yourself, lying inside your aversions and, once detected, you certainly will be able to reprogram it.
For Buchheit, every new business is a way of hacking the financial environment: think of any successful product or successful business and think of the world prior to the existence of that product or service. Someone was able to find a specific vulnerability, in this case represented by a need, and managed to exploit it. But the hacker philosophy can do more than just make you a millionaire; it can also, and above all, set yourself as the architect of your surroundings.
Just like the philosopher, the hacker searches unceasingly for the truth that awaits us, lying somewhere beyond appearance ––This underlying truth is shared by every revolution and movement that has embodied new paradigms.
Somehow, anyone who adopts a different perspective before the state of things is a hacker. And he ––his thirsty spirit–– is able to reshape, by hacking and reinventing previous systems: the models that operate our reality (institutions, companies, governments, etcetera).
Just like the mystic, the hacker seeks “the true nature of reality, and realizes that we do not possess the truth at any given moment, and that we never will.” The hacker philosophy goes far beyond merely knowing how to order endless strips of informatics codes: it is concerned with the design, deconstruction and redesign of forthcoming scenarios.
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