I just finished reading Pekka Himanen's The Hacker Ethic today and am pleased to have purchased it. Himanen has a PhD in philosophy (though the book reads at times more like a sociology piece), and was really able to use that knowledge to generate some compelling insights about hacking. For Himanen, the exciting thing about hackers is not so much their coding wizardry as the challenge they offer the dominant work ethic of our time, which he defines as the Protestant Work Ethic. Most of the book is spent describing the development of the Protestant Ethic (think Ben Franklin and Taylorism) and how the "Hacker Ethic" (think Linus Torvalds and FOSS) offers us a great alternative. Part of this is the hacker's passion and joy for her work, but also her freedom to choose what to work on and the emphasis on peer recognition over money.

The best part of the book for me was the Chapter 4, which compared the way hackers learn to the way we get taught in schools. Himanen makes some good connections here between Plato's academy and FOSS development, and monasteries and modern universities. In one section, he describes the Wikiversity in all but name:

The wider significance of the hacker learning model is its healthy reminder to us of the potential in the original idea of seeing the academic development and learning models as identical. We could also use this idea to create a generalized Net Academy, in which all study materials would be free for use, critique, and development by everyone. By improving existing material in new directions, the network would continuously produce better resources for the study of subjects at hand. (77)

I spent some time in my dissertation describing the wikiversity as well, and how we might one day evaluate students based on their performance. Himanen expores this problem as well, with tremendous insight:

Logically, the continued expansion and development of this material, as well as the discussion and examination of it, would also have to be the Net Academy's only way to grant study credits; and, true to the spirit, the highest credits should be given for those accomplishments that prove the most valuable to the entire learning community...

Students would learn by becoming researching learners from the very beginning, by discussing matters with researchers, and later on by studying the research publications of their field directly. This differs from our present mode of disposable learning, in which every student starts from the beginning, passes the same exams isolated from everyone else, and never gets to benefit from the insights of others. Worse, after the exam the examiner basically tosses all those individual insights into the wastebasket.
(78)

I was greatly excited by these passages and am still pondering ways I can make my own courses more compatible with the hacker ethic. I thought about having students contribute directly to the wikiversity we're setting up for Rhetoric and Composition, but am still trying to work out the details in my head. I suppose there is always a great deal of confusing decisions to make when you start something really new like this, but reading Himanen's book has given me the incentive I need to make them.

Himanen's book also does other things we'd expect it do. He describes the hacker's role in creating the Internet and the Web. He also touches on how business can benefit from instituting hacker ethics; their employees will become more productive and creative if allowed the kind of freedom and incentives offered by the hacker lifestyle. This is an interesting point to make if you've studied software history, which I have been doing lately. The history of software development is full of stories about how large projects failed because of poor management and lack of professionalism. Guys like Watts Humphrey saved the day at big software corporations during the 60s by basically eliminating the hacker ethic and forcing programmers to stick to a plan and a schedule. Later developments (like OOP) were ways to manage large projects by making it easier for programmers to create autonomous modules which could then be fused together in a giant program.

It's always easy to throw up GNU/Linux as a shining example of how much hackers have been able to accomplish without the sort of rigorous management long felt necessary by major software corporations. What tends to be forgotten is that most of what it took to create the free OS was the huge collection of GNU programs created over a long period of time by the GNU project. I get concerned when I see too much emphasis on Linus and the idea that he is solely responsible for the free operating system.

It's clear to me that we can't make an argument for FOSS based on criteria better suited to the Protestant Work Ethic (i.e., "It's more efficient"). I see FOSS lagging along behind commercial development, but only in terms of software development intended to satisfy corporate interests. The advantage of FOSS is rather when it is used to satisfy hacker interests. The many hacker-created tools for the Internet are a prime example. It's very telling how long it took Microsoft to really get excited about the Net (about the time it became obvious that you could make money and entice businesses into web development).

Looking back on it, I wish we'd fought harder to keep the Internet free of passwords and "secure transactions," because all that made it easier for businesses to invade the hacker's haven. Now when people think of the Net, they think mostly about the many businesses available there; Amazon.com is more likely to come to mind than anything else. For Christ's sake, people are getting their Net-news from CNN instead of those prized free bloggers. Bleh.

Manuel Castells wrote an epilogue for the book that I just couldn't get into. I tried reading it a few times and finally gave up. It's definitely a poor way to end the book; Himanen's clear and readable style is far more graceful than Castells'. I also didn't care much for Linus Torvald's prologue to the book. I'm not sure what to make of Torvalds at this point. I find his writing severely reductionist...Then again, not sure what we'd otherwise expect from a programmer.

In short, I'd recommend this book for anyone eager to dive into the question of how hacker practices and ideologies can be applied to other pursuits (though more academic than business, despite the book's subtitle). It's a good read, especially if you haven't thought much about why Robinson Crusoe named his companion "Friday."