[moxie]

Radical punk rock literally saved my life. As someone who's been a part of both of these worlds off and on for 16 years, I couldn't disagree with you more.

I see the aesthetics of the hacker and punk scenes as being extremely similar, where as the underlying motives are currently lightyears apart.

For instance, "hacker houses" and "collective houses" have a similar aesthetic. Both are about people living together, and sometimes the actual form even looks the same. But "hacker houses" fundamentally seem to be about "networking" and "making connections" to other entrepreneurs. Collective houses, on the other hand, are about building relationships -- precisely because it's so difficult to find meaningful connection in a world based on exchange. These two things look similar, but (having experienced both) I believe are radically different.

Another clear example is "hacker spaces" vs "social spaces." Again, the aesthetic is similar -- both are supposed to be "creative" spaces that have a similar logistical form. But what actually happens in both places is radically different. Anarchist "social spaces" are built on a social narrative for what people do there, where as "hacker space" activity (in the US, at least) is largely absent any kind of narrative. "Maker culture" in the US is based mostly on doing things that are "neat," and that's really the end of it. There are obvious exceptions, and the EU hacker culture has more of a narrative to it, but this is has been my experience on the whole.

[eli_awry]

I haven't had exposure to the hacker houses on the West Coast, so I can't really speak to that.

The motives of hackers I've known usually have to do with impacting the world and making it better for more people. I've been in punk houses with hackers, but we mostly had parties with art people, and collaborated with anarchists. I'm not talking about the Silicon Valley startup scene, which I know nothing about. I'm moving to MV in a month (to intern with an educational nonprofit), so I guess I'll find out.

I think I was probably wrong when I said 'startup folks', and I meant some other demographic - but it's a demographic of hackers that I've actually met in various places - Baltimore, Seattle, rural Washington state and Austin. And I (perhaps naively) thought that my various and scattered friends with a common ideological thread were representative of the makers of interesting things.

[moxie]

Perhaps my perspective is tainted by living in the bay area through two (three?) tech bubbles, however I still don't see it. I agree that HN-type hackers and anarchists both use aesthetically similar language, like "changing the world," but I think that means something substantially different in each context.

My sense is that when tech people talk about changing the world, they generally mean keeping the form of the world basically the same, but making it more efficient.

Here's an example from HN and YC, 42floors: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4500176

They use the language you're talking about -- they want to "change the world" ...with a commercial real-estate search engine! I'm sure that these folks are doing fine work, but really, the world is going to be fundamentally the same, it just might be a little easier to find commercial real-estate in it.

On the other hand, the anarchist basis is that fundamental aspects of society (police, prisons, judges, rulers, laws, taxes) were all the inventions of kings, which were later appropriated rather than destroyed. That it was a mistake to think it was possible to "change the world" simply by putting these same structures in the hands of different people, and that what's actually required is to eliminate them completely.

These, I think, are pretty different ways of conceptualizing that phrase.

I will agree that there are sometimes unusual intersections (the history of twitter, for instance).

[eli_awry]

My perspective is this: I want to make really awesome intelligent tutoring systems. I'm inspired by Enders Game, Diamond Age, and the Aristotle essay by Hillis. I want to do this because I think that the current model for distributing education privileges people who are already very advantaged, but an intelligent tutoring system could be reproduced over and over and over for free. I obviously love Khan Academy, which is being made static and delivered to places with limited/no internet connection. I think that this is radical because the vision is to use technology and the fact that things are so replicable to essentially destroy educational inequality. If you could make an educational system good enough, and distribute it widely enough, then I think that would really change the world. I want to be part of making that happen, and I'm an AI and cognitive science person, so I'm working on the tutor part.

But even this vision has so many things that other hackers are working on. Just making the net more efficient, or creating better wireless systems, or cheaper technology (or even better, technology that people can make themselves). Or empowering people to use Arduinos and to hack their own open source stuff. Or producing pedagogical content and translating it into other languages. I feel like a world in which everyone has total access to an amazing education is a world-changing proposition, and lots of hackers are working on things that really bring us closer to that.

Also I personally think that the thing that is wrong with the government is unequal application of laws and illegal hiding of government activity. I'm not convinced that there's not a place for laws, police, and taxes in a totally just society. I think that anyone who is working to destroy the (really widespread) lies and spying and unequal treatment and unjust policies and sociopathic violence of the government is doing something that, if it succeeds, will result in a truly different world. One where the laws aren't different for people depending on their class, and violence by the state is not tolerated.

I'm not claiming that working for education, diy technology, government accountability or a total overhaul of the legal system is more revolutionary than being an insurrectionist or running a totally awesome Food Not Bombs. I'm just saying that there's this idea of a better world, a fundamentally different world where things make sense and capricious cruelty is gone and everyone is essentially free to pursue the future they want and self-actualize instead of worrying about where the day's calories will come from or if it's safe to go outside. If we can have that world, I don't care if it's in an anarcho-syndicalist form, a set of independent microcountries, or just a very very reformed version of the constitutional democracies we have now. I see cheap, open source 3D printers and Food Not Bombs as having a similar mission.

I'll sum this up with a quote from an Evan Greer song "I want something that's better than this, and I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think that we could build it if we try together."

[moxie]

You don't have to defend yourself to me. I'm not saying you (or "hackers") are wrong or something, just that these are not necessarily shared beliefs among anarchists.

What you're describing is more akin to (classical) liberalism. For instance, here you draw on a couple of the core tenants of liberalism:

1) Equality. In the Jeffersonian sense (ie, under the law). This is really the cornerstone of liberalism. The classic structuralist response would be something like "Yes, yes... all men will be tried equally for the crime of stealing bread crumbs to feed their starving children."

2) Freedom of information. Also at the heart of liberalism is the idea that in a world where anyone can participate, speak, and think freely, we'll be able to select from a marketplace of ideas for how the world should look. The classic anarchist response is that we live in a specific political and economic reality that wasn't of our choosing, but which influences our desires, the way we think, how we think, and what we conceptualize as possible. Simply talking about other social or economic possibilities does not have the same effect, so just being able to speak freely is not necessarily meaningful in that context.

3) Transparency and accountability. A typical anarchist response to projects like wikileaks is something like "What is the value of truth in a world where we have no agency?" The insurrectionist, for example, doesn't attempt to shame, expose, or reform institutions of power, but rather expects their injustices as their fundamental nature. You can't blame a tiger for being a tiger.

It's true that it is possible to draw similarities in the sense that hackers and anarchists on the whole probably want "good things and not bad things." But to the extent that we're never fully going to get there, it's the tension that really matters, and that's where I believe the differences are currently quite deep between these two groups.

[rictic]

I'd give good odds you're already aware, but you should totally come to noisebridge when you're in SF.