读书摘要，一种新的黑客文化：programming is forgetting

http://opentranscripts.org/transcript/programming-forgetting-new-hacker-ethic/

这篇文章非常有意思，作者是一个计算机教师，她谈论了黑客精神的传统条目，以及自己的经历和反思如何在教学中正确传递这种计算机文化，在反思中她发现那些传统条目的BUG（Levy书中一处例子触发，里面有玛格丽特这位给阿波罗写程序被当作反角的例子引起作者的重新思考），于是经过重新思考编程的视角，从计算机编程对世界的建模是Forgetting（信息丢失）的这种角度（举例了图像压缩、数据库建表、速记、Unicode编码等例子），重新思考了了传统黑客精神的每个条目，给出了自己的版本。

作者首先回顾了Levy书中的传统黑客文化的核心要素，包括了以下

1. Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
2. All information should be free.
3. Mistrust authority—promote decentralization.
4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race or position.
5. You can create art and beauty on a computer.
6. Computers can change your life for the better.

Levy的书是1984年写的，作者成长的时代已经错过了书中所介绍的黑客文化的第一个黄金时期。作者在成长过程中受黑客文化影响很大，然而又一天她再次阅读这本书，发现书中的一个例子的BUG。

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当作者意识到这点的时候，一度出离地愤怒，作者重新基于逻辑对Levy书中的6点做了反思：

So first of all the idea that access to computers should be unlimited and total. The hacker Nelson succeeded in gaining total access. He was enacting this part of the ethic. But what he didn’t consider is in the process he did not uphold that access for another person. Another person was denied access by his complete access.

Two, all information should be free. No one who really believes in the idea that all information should be free would start a secret organization that works only at night called The Midnight Computer Rewiring Society? Information about their organization clearly was not meant to be free, it was meant to be secret.

Three, the mistrust of authority. The “mistrust of authority” in this instance was actually a hacker coup. Nelson took control of the computer for himself, which wasn’t decentralizing authority, it was just putting it into different hands.

Four, hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. Of course, Hamilton’s access the computer was considered unimportant before her hacking could even be evaluated. And as a sidenote it’s interesting to note that gender is not included among the bogus criteria that Levy lists. That may be neither here nor there.

作者进而从编程是对世界建模这个角度入手，重新思考编程对世界建模的视角应该是怎样的：

One is that the world is a system and can be understood as being governed by rules or code.
Two, anything can be fully described and understood by understanding its parts individually—divorced from their original context.
Three, systems can be “imperfect”—which implies that a system can also be made perfect.
And four, therefore, given sufficient access (potentially obtained without permission)—and sufficient “debugging”—it’s possible to make a computer program that perfectly models the world.

So, the term “hacker” still has high value in tech culture.And it’s a privilege…if somebody calls you a hacker that’s kind of like a compliment. It’s a privilege to be able to be called a hacker, and it’s reserved for the highest few.

从而，作者提出了程序对世界建模的另外一个视角：

programming is forgetting,And this is both a methodology and a warning.

Sometimes forgetting isn’t a side-effect

In the “programming is forgetting” model, the world can’t debugged. But what you can do is recognize and be explicit about your own point of view and the assumptions that you bring to the situation.

But what I want to do is I want to foster a technology culture in which a high value is placed on understanding and being explicit about your biases about what you’re leaving out, so that computers are used to bring out the richness of the world instead of forcibly overwriting it.

作者对传统黑客文化条目中前四条提出了自己的版本：

Instead of saying access to computers should be unlimited and total, we should ask “Who gets to use what I make? Who am I leaving out? How does what I make facilitate or hinder access?”

Instead of saying all information should be free, we could ask “What data am I using? Whose labor produced it and what biases and assumptions are built into it? Why choose this particular phenomenon for digitization or transcription? And what do the data leave out?”

Instead of saying mistrust authority, promote decentralization, we should ask “What systems of authority am I enacting through what I make? What systems of support do I rely on? How does what I make support other people?”

And instead of saying hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position, we should ask “What kind of community am I assuming? What community do I invite through what I make? How are my own personal values reflected in what I make?”

最后，作者认为后两条仍然是好的，给予保留：

You can create art and beauty on a computer.

Computers can change your life for the better.

我们可以读下SICP前言里的这段：https://mitpress.mit.edu/sicp/full-text/book/book-Z-H-3.html

I think that it's extraordinarily important that we in computer science keep fun in computing. When it started out, it was an awful lot of fun. Of course, the paying customers got shafted every now and then, and after a while we began to take their complaints seriously. We began to feel as if we really were responsible for the successful, error-free perfect use of these machines. I don't think we are. I think we're responsible for stretching them, setting them off in new directions, and keeping fun in the house. I hope the field of computer science never loses its sense of fun. Above all, I hope we don't become missionaries. Don't feel as if you're Bible salesmen. The world has too many of those already. What you know about computing other people will learn. Don't feel as if the key to successful computing is only in your hands. What's in your hands, I think and hope, is intelligence: the ability to see the machine as more than when you were first led up to it, that you can make it more .

Alan J. Perlis (April 1, 1922-February 7, 1990)