Hackers have a bad reputation.
It’s because everyone uses the word “hacking” incorrectly; It’s used for everything from posting rude things to someone else’s Facebook or Twitter stream when their account is left logged in and unattended to huge intrusions into network systems committed by foreign governments.
It’s time that changed. It’s time real hackers take back the term and differentiate themselves from opportunistic jerks and highly proficient computer criminals.
To me, a hacker is someone who sees the world as it is and refuses to accept that it has to be that way. That could be a piece of software, a gadget, an organization, a government, etc.
We’re not bothered by the warnings in the manual, voiding warranties or disapproving looks. We make things. We break things and then put them back together, sometimes in ways unintended by the original creator.
It’s that spirit of creativity and ingenuity that drives hackers the world over to imagine possibilities for the humdrum and ordinary, then work to make them happen.
You may know them as activists, but at heart, they’re really hackers. They come in all shapes and sizes, skill sets, political philosophies and nationalities, and they’re all itching to make a difference.
Best of all, it has never been easier than today for a handful of people to launch a revolution. All it takes is focused creativity, some cheap computing power and publically available data.
Thankfully, it doesn’t take a punk haircut, a fancy laptop or specialized training to be a hacker. All it takes is imagination, persistence and a willingness to get in up to your elbows and play until you’ve got something that works.
Hacking is a mindset, and I’ve come up with a thousand tortured metaphors over the years to try to explain the abject joy of tinkering with something until it works and the thrill of discovery, but I’ll spare you.
The National Day of Civic Hacking has a great definition: “To us, a hacker is someone who uses a minimum of resources and a maximum of brainpower and ingenuity to create, enhance or fix something.”
Savannah needs more hackers. We need more people who can use a minimum of resources and maximum brainpower to help solve some of our area’s problems. We spend too much time arguing about things that don’t matter, and too little sitting down and banging out solutions to problems that affect all of us.
We spend more time arguing about what to call a problem than actually solving it. It’s time to stop grinding old axes and start chopping down some trees (I knew I couldn’t go through this whole thing without a bad metaphor).
Which is where The National Day of Civic Hacking comes in.
It’s a chance for citizens, activists, technologists, designers, entrepreneurs — for everyone — to join as a group and hack together unique solutions using data and technology or maybe art and words. Let’s not put any limits on solutions.
You get 48 hours to pull together openly available data, glue it together with code and show our local community, or even the world, a better way to do things.
The National Day of Civic Hacking is coming up June 1-2 at ThincSavannah. You can register at http://bit.ly/SavannahNDCH and find more information about the National Day of Civic Hacking at http://hackforchange.org.
Let’s get hacking!
Kevin Lawver serves as a volunteer board member with The Creative Coast. Kevin can be found all over the Web but mostly on twitter as @kplawver. You can email him at kevin@lawver.net.