From MIT to QAnon

Tracing the Hacker DNA in Participatory Fakery

Hackers, The Best of 2600, A History of Fake Things on the Internet

I was first drawn to writing about hackers – those computer programmers and designers who regard computing as the most important thing in the world… they were adventurers, visionaries, risk-takers, artists… and the ones who most clearly saw why the computer was a truly revolutionary tool. - Steven Levy, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. 1984.

Once, I fell for a hacker. Through our journey I’ve come to intimately understand the hacker ethic valuing information, learning, and technology’s power to transform lives. It’s a philosophy that mirrors infophilia, the human love for information and connections and much like polymaths, hackers embody curiosity and creativity.

Hacking, however, contains contradictions. The principle of information access conflicts with information security. The recent disruption of services — loss of information access - at the London Public Library system (Canada), British Library (UK) and the Toronto Public Library (Canada) caused by ransomware attacks coupled with a new book I am reading, A History of Fake Things on the Internet by Walter J. Scheirer motivates this letter. I de-mystify hackers and explain participatory fakery.