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A Hacker Manifesto

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McKenzie Wark's *A Hacker Manifesto* is a bold and daring effort to rethink the composition of society in the age of digital media and to constitute a politics appropriate to the tenor of the times. Like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' *The Communist Manifesto,* to which *Hacker* represents a clear homage, Wark deftly walks a fine rhetorical line. On the one hand, he attempts to describe the character and tendencies of contemporary society, a society in which capitalism's reach extends ever deeper by producing new and increasingly abstract forms of private property. On the other hand, like all manifestos worth their salt, Wark's book also is constitutive, helping to call a new creative subject - the hacker class - into being. Their interests and practices, Wark shows, are set against those of the vectoralist class, a group intent on capturing and expropriating the products of those who hack or creatively rework existing cultural raw material. *A Hacker Manifesto* thus serves as a junction point of sorts - both a call and an answer - for an emerging class consciousness and set of creative practices.

*Hacker* also owes a debt to Guy DeBord's *Society of the Spectacle,* given its methodically aphoristic style. And like *Spectacle,* Wark deftly moves between philosophy and social theory, history and economics, politics and media, creation and criticism. The result is a powerfully interdisciplinary - and astonishingly insightful - book whose recombinant style at once embodies and emboldens the politics of hacking that he so admires.

If you choose to read this book (and I hope that you do), bear in mind that what you'll find is eminently quotable. The task at hand is not to quote Wark's book, however, for to do so would be tantamount to transforming his insights into deadened theoretical abstractions. Quotation is the hobgoblin of the vectoralist class. *Hacker* asks not to be quoted, but to be, well, hacked - to be plundered for insights whose only end is their radical reworking and recombination.

Intellectual property may become the defining question of our times for those who work in and between the media and the academy. McKenzie Wark's 'A Hacker Manifesto' is a major intervention in this arena, one that suggests new ways of asking (and answering) 'the property question.' Wark's manifesto is beautifully written in spare, elegant prose of rare economy. The book is structured in short numbered theses, borrowing from Guy Debord's 'Society of the Spectacle', and these are often built around irresistible aphorisms - 'education is slavery', 'invention is the mother of necessity', 'information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains.' Other versions of this text exist online, but this is the one to get: the notes alone (exclusive to this version) are stimulating reading, and the book is handsomely designed. It is a work which deserves to be widely read, used, discussed, taught, argued with - and hacked.

Warks book is one of the most refreshing books I have read from this year. His argument about the change in capitalism and the role of intellectual "property" will become increasingly important. His use of Debord, Marx and Deleuze to deal with the rise of the vectorial class is great! Anyone interested in internet theory, postmodern theory or anarchist theory should really read this book.

A Hacker Manifesto is essential and engrossing reading.

Graciously avoiding the definite article, Wark's book successfully breathes new life into a debate which has been stumbling around directionless for some time now, last spotted muttering to itself about the "crisis of the humanities" and the "death of theory." Taking the premise that Marx's legacy is more crucial than ever - especially after 1989 and the rise of the information economy - this carefully-structured collection of aphorisms functions as a positive alternative to the toothless Cultural Studies' mantra celebrating "RTS" (Resistance-Transgression-Subversion). Instead, Hacker Manifesto offers a sophisticated framework for understanding the historical potential latent within an emerging class: the hacker class - needed by the "vectorialist class" (informational entrepreneurs) to do their sterile dirty work, but not completely controlled by them either. Erudite, poetic, and richly condensed, Wark's little red book is as beautifully designed as it is argued.

Indeed, no-one grappling with "the network society" - or the political and ethical stakes of our increasingly digital world - can afford to ignore the challenges and insights offered here. Like Hardt & Negri's Empire, this book is a strategic experiment in optimism, and a vigorous rejection of the passive-nihilism of much diluted French-inspired theory in the 1980s and 90s. There is something of the Pascalian wager here; but in relation to the potential for radical change, rather than divine life after death. Indeed, Wark's expansion of the term "hack" outside computer subcultures and into the wider world of political economy (laws, discourses, institutions, modes of production, etc.), may be his most lasting gift to the continuing hacking and retrofitting of established ideas and virtual options.

After noting that "information wants to be free but is everywhere in chains," the author calls for a "third politics" for the third era of abstraction of labor (beyond the pastoralists and the capitalists). "New circumstances call for new theories, and new practices, but also for the cultivation of variants, alternatives, mutant strains."

It's true that Wark assumes a certain familiarity with the Big Ideas of the last few hundred years, and this book will therefore seem somewhat elusive to those who are not versed in Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Benjamin, Debord, Deleuze, etc. But like all manifestos worth their salt, it allows - even encourages - re-reading and prolonged reflection. In other words, this is not for people looking for 5-second brain-abs, but a commitment to thinking through the issues associated with living in a time of "weapons of mass seduction."

Poetic without being florid, inspiring without being overly inflated, Hacker's Manifesto satisfies the criteria of all important books; reminding us that things could - and *should* - be otherwise.

But for Wark's sake, please don't make a bumper sticker out of his pithy phrase: "Hack the lack that lacks the hack."

"There can be no one book, no one thinker for these times. What is called for is a practice of combining heterogeneous modes of perception, thought and feeling, different styles of researching and writing, different kinds of connection to different readers, proliferation of information across different media, all practiced within a gift economy, expressing and elaborating differences, rather than broadcasting a dogma, a slogan, a critique or a line." -- McKenzie Wark

A Hacker Manifesto is the Big Picture of not only where we are in the "information age," but where we're going as well. Adopting the epigrammic style of Guy Debord's Society of the Spectacle, as well as updating its ideas, Ken Wark establishes so-called "knowledge workers" as an unrecognized social class: "the hacker class." Wark also updates Marx and Engels, Deleuze and Guattari, Nietzsche, and a host of others.

Wark also eloborates on what he has called "the vectoral class." That is, the owners of the vectors that control the flow of information. They need and use the hacker class to turn information into commodity through ownership and scarcity. Derrida argued against the "informatization of language, which transforms language and culture from a safe preserve into a resource that can be exploited for extrinsic purposes." Control of this resource is where the tension between the hacker class and the vectoral class plays out.

Far from just being the story of "us versus them" class struggles, Ken Wark's book is far more complex: It tackles many issues, historical, emergent, and emerging. Opening up new discursive spaces where none existed before, A Hacker Manifesto might well turn out to be one of the most important books of the new century.

I sigh when I see writing like this, writing that is so stylized and cryptic that few can understand it. I do understand why some theorists employ this style: trying to break free of certain political and historical conventions, they decide they had better break every convention in language while they are at it. Some of the reason for this book's difficulty is that its language is constantly (but silently) referring to other theorists' work (theorists who mostly write in this difficult style and who are read almost exclusively by academics). So the end result is less than satisfactory, unless you happen to be a poet of this particular school of poetry. Then, it's little more than an internal memorandum to those already in the choir.

On a more practical note, this book isn't about hackers as most people understand the term (and as most who might buy this think it means). Wark is using the term to describe a divers group of not-necessarily related revolutionaries who want to change the world for the better by safeguarding knowledge from privatization and undermining the efforts of those who want to own knowledge.

Reading this book is a difficult hack. To be honest, I often have no idea what he means even after reading a sentence several times, and looking every word up in the dictionary.

I've never been able to understand Karl Marx either, and the book has a lot of Marxist rhetoric.

The apologists for the vectoral interest want to limit the semantic productivity of the term "hacker" to a mere criminality, precisely because they fear its more abstract and multiple potential--its class potential.

McKensie Wark calls the state "an envelope" whose primary function is to "police representations." I think this way of construing nations has a such a forceful brevity that it disallows simple rebuttal. An envelope loosely unifies, contains, closes, enfolds multiplicities into a unit, a projectile. And what does "policing representaitons" mean? Determing the extent to which an identity (political, social, religious, etc) can be commodified and incorporated into the state in order to perpetuate itself and yet give the specific identity the illusion of freedom and self-determination. This can be seen in the way cops determine routes and surrond the perimeter at protests (J20 for instance) and give us some limited form of freedom, 'allowing us free speech' while at the same time, if we concede to this limited freedom, we give up the possibility of confronting the form of freedom they allow, i.e., freedom surrounded by police with weapons telling you when you can move, and hence, we are neutralized without even knowing it. This is how incredibly dispossessed peoples can identify with the state, since the state gives them a possibility, a "dream" of a moment of limited freedom. The minute a real threat is formulated, ie, a threat to the economy or to the collective hallucination of the state itself, you better bet that you don't pass go or collect $200 but go straight to jail. This is why, perhaps, the state makes it incredibly clear that hackers are NOT political prisoners. Those
who hijack the information vectors that regulate finance, statistics, communicatiom, and images must be stopped before they can form a political class. They are criminals. copyright infringement, filesharing, (and soon, indymedia) are crimes, not acts of culture. Not until the state can find a way to represent those acts, commodify them, and sell them back to us for
a price will they be seen as cultural/political acts. That is already happening, I believe.

This book challenges our previously held critiques of the state, identity, production, and class in a synthetic crptomarxist style that is both difficult and attractive. It incorporates the rise of the information class into its analysis, as well as the relations between the overdeveloped and underdeveloped world.

My only critique is that it's radical potential was limited by its allegiance to a (form of) Marxist critique. I think that a conversation with anarchism and anarchist organizing could have produced/unified some different trajectories of thought about representation and the state.

Either way, its a great read. If the language and poetry turns you off, then just skip around until you find the parts you like. Its a playground of meaning.

Hear my interview with Mckensie here: http://radio.indymedia.org/news/2005/02/3719.php

Let me start of by saying up front that I am apparently a political opposite to the points of view raised in this book.. I really tried to read this with an open mind, but the writing is so dry and stilted that I simply couldn't get in to the philosophies being presented.. It felt like reading Decline and Fall.. Only without the love and craftsmanship.. At least when you finish reading Decline and Fall you feel a sense of accomplishment.. After reading A Hacker Manifesto I felt robbed of my time..

Mackenzie Wark's A Hacker Manifesto tries to present the hacker as the driving force, and real power of civilization.. He declares the hacker, whether he is a scientist, artist, or programmer, as the only true creator.. Everyone else is either a user or used.. With the hacker falling somewhere in the middle bridging the gap between classes..

The whole time I was reading this book I kept waiting for a revelation.. Something new.. But it just doesn't happen.. A Hacker Manifesto reads like Marxism 2.0.. It's the same old idea wrapped in modern trends and job classes.. It subtly paints the capitalist class as the oppressive users of the labor classes and portrays the hacker class as the salvation for everyone.. It's too black and white, too obvious, of a philosophy to be of any real use for anyone that has even a basic understanding of Marxism and Communism.. And the whole time I was reading it I got this subtle feeling that the author was really writing a "look at me, I'm smart" book.. I'm sure that others will disagree, but I just see nothing groundbreaking in this book.. If you want to good book on Communism, go to some original sources and read Trotsky or Lenin.. If nothing else they are a better read..

In this age where the anti-democratic evil empires are in the form of radical Islamic zealots and multi-national corporations, I sort of miss the commies. McKenzie Wark does more than pay homage to Marx in the Hacker Manifesto; he updates it using the same relentless logic of any good Marxist. However, unlike the original, or Manifesto 1.0, the Manifesto 2.0 seeks to remedy certain historical, cultural and empirical flaws of the original. However, like the original, Wark follows his own logic without looking out the window of reality, so to speak.

Wark begins his book with the delight of discovery and invention experienced by any good hacker (a hacker is creative, stylish and possesses technical skills -- more a concert pianist than a well-trained cyber-worker). What comes out of the hacker's essence is the experience of discovery, invention and a special freedom in the flow of creation in the cyber world. (Wow! That's what I've experienced!)

Alas, this experience is cut short by the (evil) vectoralists -- sort of a cyber bourgeoisie. Actually, updated in the latter part of the 20th Century, the bourgeoisie is the ruling elite who own the means of communication -- the vectors are the processes by which the hackers can hack. The creative work of the hackers is gobbled up by the vectoralists who slap copyrights on and make owned commodities out of product of the hacker's creation. The hacker's labor is no longer his/her own, but rather is owned by the vectoralists. For those of you who have read the story in Manifesto 1.0, this sounds more like Manifesto 1.1 than 2.0. Can alienation be the next step as the hacker is separated from not only the results of his/her labor, but also the process of creativity and one's very self? Yes, indeed, and we're off to the same great logic that made so much sense in 1848.

Hold up. First of all, the newest version of the hackers' world is the internet, and the internet is annoyingly (for the capitalist) un-owned. True, access to the internet can be expensive (or stolen) and you have to buy all that neat stuff like computers, Ethernet cards and all the rest, but if you want to hack into a creative world of one's own making (and spread it around the world even) you can. You can create anything you want and slap a Public Domain notice on it to keep the fruits of your labor available to one and all at no cost to them and out of the hands of the vectoralists. In fact, it's never been easier to take an idea (or virtual commodity like software) and spread it so far and so quickly and efficiently that the vectoralists don't have time to muster copyright notices and make users pay for it.

Or, you can sell it. If you create a killer app, you can sell the fruits of your labor just like a 19th Century guildsman. You can use anything from EBay to your own web site to establish an international merchant stall and trade in dollars, euros, yen or whatever currency suits your fancy. Alternatively, you can sell your killer app to the corporate elite and take the money and run. Or you can start your own corporation like Billy Gates did.

You've got a choice that the 19th century laborers, forced off the land, did not have. This is not to say the vectoralists do not have power. They do. They do everything from rig elections to write the law--at least in the U.S. However, like the Dilbert-managers of the world, the vectorlists are screw-ups and fighting each other as much as reining in hackers. (Sun and Microsoft represent one example of bickering vectoralists, but that's not the point.) The point is that this is not the 19th Century, and it hasn't been for some time. Wark doesn't seem to think it matters.

Wark readily dismisses the cultural ignorance of the Marxist position. He implies that Marx was not right to ignore culture but seems to do so himself. Likewise, he doesn't think that the reality of communism has to result in a ruling oligarchy like the old Soviet Union or China, but it's a bit murky about how his dissolution of the state will occur. Rather, Wark argues for a "de-commodification" of information in favor of free abstraction. This, in turn, will reduce the scarcity of information and stick it to the vectoral classes and their base of power.

Like Marx, Wark seems to hark back to the good old days of hunting and gathering societies. Like the Bushmen (or San) of South Africa, where all is shared, Wark envisions a world where information is free, freely produced and freely shared. This is not radical; it's a dream-like form of reactionary thinking. The good old days of pre-Feudal Europe? Of tribal China? The warring tribes of Afghanistan? The good old days never were very good, and they probably never existed to begin with.

The "producing classes" are harkened to unite to keep the commodization of information out of the greedy hands of the vectoralists, and that, thanks largely to the internet, is not all that hard. I guess, the producing classes are supposed to share and share alike and everyone will have plenty.

The numbered paragraphs may hit some as pretentious freely lifted from Wittengenstein and Nietzsche, but that's just so that you can easily find each pearl of wisdom. Also, one may ponder why a book like this was not slapped into a PDF file and made freely available. Giving Wark the benefit of the doubt, I would imagine that he believed that his book would be taken seriously if Harvard Univeristy Press published it instead of Wark's blog page. (I have it on good authority that Harvard Unversity Press has no sense of humor; ergo, the book must be serious.) Besides the promotion committee at New School where Wark is on the faculty will probably take a publication by HUP as more worthy than a treatise in a PDF file.

Wark snipes at Pekka Himanen, author of The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, for "willfully confusing the hacker with the entrepreneur," making it sound like Himanen was pulling something shady. Nonsense. Himanen was aping Weber as Wark was Marx. Himanen was talking about entrepreneurs who were also hackers and not some pimply-faced 14-year old trying to break into a porn site or dreamy coders writing useless but fun software. The hacker ethnic is more about discovery and how hackers can internalize an entrepreneural spirit useful for inventive business than trying to pull the wool over anyone's eyes.

Finally, this is a 5-star review, meaning I really like this book. (Not a mistaken reviewer who cannot tell the difference between 1 and 5.) That's because despite disagreeing with the author, this is the first book to come along in a while that really provokes thought on these matters.