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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An important idea, an important book, March 9, 2001
I should say up front that I'm not totally disinterested in the Hacker Ethic. I'm a media critic and author and I blurbed this book, something I don't do a lot. I did -- and am writing this review -- because I feel strongly that this is a very important book advancing a central idea -- the hacker ethic, profoundly misunderstood and demonized by the popular media, is important, both to politics and work. This isn't another in the avalanche of impenetrable cyber-culture books. It looks backwards as well as forwards, to the Protestant Ethic that has shaped many of our lives, and beyond, to the hacker joy and passion. The hacker ethic has trigger a true social and cultural revolution. Himanen (who I don't know) traces its roots, and perhaps more importantly, where it can take us. This is very important. If journalists, CEO's and others would read this book carefully, they might get ahead of the Net Revolution for once, instead of scrambling continuously to figure out where the world is going. If you want to know, this is a good place to start. It is also a very noble endeavor to finally give the hackers their due in the evolution of the modern world. It's not a big dense read either, which it easily could have been. It is a small book and moves quickly. It's ideas are accessible, and very, very convincing.
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22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Intriguing Viewpoints, March 27, 2002
This book compares the so-called "hacker work ethic" as compared to the old "Protestant work ethic," examining so-called hacker culture and their motivations for working and completing projects, as opposed to the world view of working "because you are supposed to." It makes a number of interesting observations, and points out that in our world, the pressure to "work, work, work" never seems to escape us, in spite of all the technological advances of our world designed to "make life easier." It also points out that "true hackers" are willing to work at something in order to improve it and are not always motivated to do so by the almighty dollar. I long have worked with engineers who come in to work at 10 or 11 am but stay until almost midnight every day and never quite understood why until now. It's the desire to continue to tinker with and ultimately complete a project. I will never be a "true hacker," since I lack the aptitude and ultimately patience to sit at a computer screen all hours of the day and night trying to solve programming problems, but books like these give me a much better understanding of the ones who are.
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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Hacker Work Ethic...Or A New Play Ethic?, February 20, 2001
I've never read a clearer, more erudite, more persuasive demolition of the old Protestant Work Ethic than Pekka Himanen's essay in this book. And that clarity comes from being part of a new constituency - the hacker community - who are redefining what it is to be a passionate, active, creative, tool-wielding human being (ie, it's much more than just being a "worker"). And rather than the Hacker Ethic being the usual pizza-stained celebration of digital anarchism you find in hacker commentary, Himanen begins to construct a real and tangible politics out of the self-organising energies of hackerdom. What might the hacker ethic mean for how we build educational institutions, as communities of inquiry rather than job factories? For how we generate technological innovation, in ways that don't always depend on the furies of the market? For how we might provide social services amongst ourselves, rather than waiting for politicians and bureaucrats to deliver? I suppose the only problem I have - and it's one I'm trying to answer with my own project, The Play Ethic (on the web) is this: why do we need to keep describing unalienated human productivity and creativity (which is what hackerdom, and other forms of modern behaviour, are) as "work"? Isn't this the last legacy of Calvin and Knox, still shaping our minds through controlling our vocabulary? Why not call it "play", and be done with it - that's play as defined by Sartre, "that action we do when we apprehend that we are truly free": or Schiller's, meaning that activity we do when we are (as adults) "fully human"? Play also extends beyond the hacker community (still, as Pekka admits, predominantly male), and touches upon all the other "arts of living" that evade the patriarchal work ethic - in emotions, parent-child relationships, New Age spirituality, gender androgyny, ecological sensibilities. There is also a whole world of non-Christian theologies and traditions out there which place human creativity at their core, which could have been mentioned. (And what about Harold Bloom's cry for an American gnosticism in Omens of Millenium? That's just waiting for Richard Stallman and his cultic robes!) But hell, that's the book *I'm* writing... In the meantime, The Hacker Ethic is the worst news that the New Economy's work ethic could ever have - which means, the best for all us. Put a copy on your pal's desk: the one with the nervous twitch and the grey pallor. And watch the passion come back into his/her face.
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