Week 12 a.k.a. Seven Values Of A Modern Hacker

This week's blogpost is going to be the analyzis of Dr. Pekka Himanen's seven hacker values from Hacker Ethics. This is Week 12 of SPEAIT2021K course and I would like to become a hacker. 

1. Passion

This is described by Dr. Pekka Himanen as an "intrinsic creative push that motivates them [hackers] to explore, create and adapt" and in my opinion that is the most important value out of all seven. Regardless of whether you're a hacker or not, you need to be passionate about what you do, you need to find joy in doing it. "If you do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life".

2. Freedom

Although it makes sense and is applicable in some cases, complete freedom cannot and should not be guaranteed in all aspects of life. In my opinion it is okay to have freedom in your actions as long as it doesn't interfere with other people's freedom and well-being.

3. Work Ethic

While it is acceptabale and even necessary to debate rules in some context, it is better to follow them generally speaking. Furthermore, prerequisite for debating rules should be experise in the given field. To illustrate my point, I will bring up recent protests against wearing masks all around the world and in Estonia particularly. Those protesting had no knowledge of the topic whatsoever, made up their own truth and fought for it. In my opinion that is not what Dr. Pekka Himanen meant when coming up with his seven values.

4. Money Ethic

That is once again something that should apply not only to hackers, but to every single person. Money should indeed be viewed as means to achieve something greater, definetely not as a goal of its own. There is a great line in the song Remember This by NF that goes: "If money's where you find happiness, you'll always be poor".

And few more:

"You spend your whole life worried about what's in your wallet

For what? That money won't show up in your coffin!"

And few more related to the topic from the song 10 Feet Down:

"Yeah, seems like we're all trying to climb a ladder

It's crazy what we'll do to climb it faster

It's like we throw away the things in life that really matter

Just so that we can make it to the top, and wonder what we're even climbing after"

5. Network ethic

And yet another value that applies to people in general, not only to hackers. I'm starting to sense a pattern here... It is essential that everyone follows online social norms - netiquette - this way we can make the Web a better place.

6. Caring

Caring about the the people around you, doing things not to earn money but to help others, seeing the greater picture and sometimes even choosing collective good over your own happiness - should these qualities really apply only to hackers?

7. Creativity

And last, but most certainly not least we have the seventh value - creativity. Some say that advertisement - is the engine of progress and you definetely have to be creative to work in advertisement. This value plays even greater role in IT world since creative programmers and hackers are the ones that come up with groundbreaking solutions.

While analyzing seven values brought up by Dr. Pekka Himanen I came to a conclusion, that  even though they were written as hacker values, they actually apply to all people and are quite a great thing to keep in mind.