Nicholas McGill

When I think of the term “hack” I think of an empowering effort of customization, bending a system to the unique needs of a user or community, not an inherent criminal act. Is there a large body of business dinosaurs walking the earth who believe that hacking is a largely negative term? And if so, are those people speaking from a position of morality or is it a place of fear/ preservation of business and political status quot? Whether we are talking politics, tech, software, hardware, ideology, or religion, I notice those who scoff at the notion of hacking haven’t chased the idea through to a societal level, or past their own business ethics and are in a position of  commercial gain by prescribing how others ought to operate. So -Hacking? Good or Bad? Notice I did not say- hacking to break the law (and if you operate on a definition that requires criminal behavior/mal intent, you need to read a few more books on the subject before entering the fray). Can we all agree that while you might be breaking terms of service when hacking, you might not be breaking any laws? Moving on.

Common hacking references I hear most often:

• The most popular usage of the term “hack” that I hear refers to customizing one’s life or digital lifestyle to suit their needs. Isn’t it sad that in order to customize what we engage in the most intimate of interactions we must overcome a wall of code and binary dictatorship? How is that prescription right or moral?
• Hacking your phone to add functionality/features/derive more utility to get what you paid for – Legality does not define morality, neither does honoring ToS. Fair is Fair. If someone walked up to you and said they hacked their phone, would you look down on or admire them? When someone tells me that they’ve hacked their phone to add more features and functionality or open up a marketplace, I don’t for a moment think of it as unethical behavior. How is programming code different than oral dictation? The difference or line is only drawn when we accept the abstractions and concepts, which is of course why hacker types refuse to view it as unethical?
• Life Hacking- Productivity/Happiness/ Efficiency. If digital lifestyles are a part of life, how are they not therefor under the positive umbrella of life hacking? Do you look down upon those who do not accept life as it is prescribed to them? Or, do you admire them? I think of hacking as an investigation of what is being prescribed for you, and from knowledge gained, overcoming obstacles to make something more usable to your individual needs. Why is it okay to hack life but not okay to “hack”? Is there really an overwhelmingly negative association with the phrase.
• Hacking to drive innovation and preserve/create free markets- e.g. Don’t you dare tell me walled in markets of iOS, Android and all across the web are open/free and good for consumers or even legal.
• Hacking requires investigation and often leads to rejection of what is being prescribed on the box. The result? Free market competition, innovation, change, upgrades, patches, in short: a lot. Check out  Steve Jobs’ biography where it is made clear that he and Woz were making and selling blue boxes to cheat the phone company (a federal crime I might add). The mindset for exploration, and contrarian adventure lead to the creation Apple, which has arguably been a more positive force for user centered movement (despite its best efforts to cripple it now).

If you support the philosophical standings of protagonists in films like The Matrix and Tron, and a zillion others, this is a hacker’s mindset that should be honored and expected to manifest into action.  How backward is it to suppress freedom in theory from freedom in practice?

I think, and feel free to counter me on this, those who still hold a negative notion of the phrase are those who complain when you don’t whole heartedly swallow the goods they are selling. I’m curious to know what others think about the issue. Am I such a fan of counter-culture that I am lost on this issue? Or is this a classic sign of our times,  ”the man” wants to keep you dumb and ignorant so they can remain fat and happy conundrum.Hackers, Life hackers, or what have you seem to share a particular attitude that businesses find offensive. They challenge, explore, exploit, bend and manipulate what is presented and prescribed. Isn’t that what most businesses do in the first place? Do they  not leverage knowledge and information to manipulate systems and markets in their favor? Why is it immoral to do so on an individual basis? Excuse me for refusing to be screwed over, manipulated and guilt tripped into accepting how you’d have me lead my life (e.g. under-utilization, blind-consumption, suffering, debt and torment).

I understand from a business sense why some complain about the notion, because a well informed customer, is often a very demanding one. They can be real nags, requiring a great deal of time effort and energy to appease. We call them power users, the few who, use more than 2% of the functionality in the tools they buy. Is it not intelligent and desirable to pursue greater utilization of the tools at our disposal.  The high TEE requirement means high cost. So power users, informed users, and those who lead the way (hackers), are looked upon as cost centers. Then again, however, in the enterprise world – Customer Service and Relationship Management are equally looked at with disdain and negativity as necessary though loathed, cost centers.

To hold a negative view of it comes across a hypocritical. If you’re a student of history and innovation, how can you separate the hacks from other innovations?  The litmus test for morality of the act simply because it was against the “rules” or “terms of service” doesn’t fly. It seems to me that the pursuit of knowledge, wisdom, and awareness are pursuits of freedom, and that those who repremand.

Obviously there is a line and a big raging gray area, but by no means is it as black and white as it once was.There are clearly people out there who have mal intent, your standard black hat hackers. They keep the cyber-security complex going. Yet these are the exception rather than the rule. Or is it? Do you think the term Hack, Life Hack, Hacker, Life Hacker, etc. are negative? How and where do you draw the lines? The moment it interferes with a business model is a ridiculous answer; as the pursuit of freedom and knowledge seem to be in opposition to many business models these days especially in an information/services dominant economy. So, again where do we draw the lines.

I believe American culture is rooted in finding more efficient ways of doing things. We are capable of working hard about things that we’re passionate about, but for everything else, our  brains are hard wired to find easier, simpler, faster means to achieve goals. This is true for all of us and the virtues of this characteristic are well known but only tell one side of the story. But, before you begin to whip out your American flags and patriotic hymns , this same drive for efficiency also drives us to be lazier, corrupt, to game the system, hack the numbers, swindle, lie and cheat.  Put simply in every avenue, we’re born to hack.

In the realm of physical fitness, there are traditional measurements that have proven to be reliable in helping achieve goals like losing weight, gaining muscle, and increasing cardiovascular performance.  Metrics like calories, BMI, heart rate (BPM), weight, and of course time, all play a role in judging performance and deciding where we are getting the most bang for our buck.  We have similar metrics in to measure business efforts as well. Social Media channels and networks however, create their own metrics that cannot be traced to our primary business objectives. In the fitness example, Imagine a new program that added new metrics like counting glances and giggles from pretty women you see while working out, or drops of sweat, etc. These are poor indicators of physical fitness and they distract from the objectives we seek to achieve.  Likes, Follows, Re-Tweets and Sentiment are similarly distracting and equally useless.