The need to learn (Why Hackers rule my world)
2008-12-27 01:51:42
Hello from Berlin, Germany, where I will attend the world's largest congregation of hackers and technology enthusiasts - the 25th Chaos Communication Congress (25C3), which runs from the 27th to the 30th of December.
Shortly before I left, someone asked me a very curious question, which could be paraphrased like this:
"Why do you attend a Hacker conference? How does that help you in your work?"
This long post is my answer to that question.
First of all, one needs to understand what I do, and why I do it:
I am fascinated by technology. Since I have been a child, I have always wanted to know how things work (which explains the famous childhood incident involving me, a grandfather clock, and a screwdriver...). Whether it was that clock, or a bicycle, or a set of electronic circuits, a weighing scale or, in later life, computers and software - I needed to know how they worked, and then putting them to work.
As a child, a repeating episode was that of me trying to build a robotic arm. I can recall trying to do that when I was 9 years old, sitting on the floor of our living room in Berlin, trying to get a set of Lego bricks, pulleys, strings and an electric motor to get an arm to raise and lower itself, and grip something.
Don't ask me why I was trying to do that (and again many times later), or why I kept persisting (I have yet to build one that works, but some day I will), but every time I was triggered by something, such as a book (usually an Asimov) or a movie, I would again feel that itch.
In my urge to find out things, I developed something else - the urge to find out where technology was going, and what it would be capable of. That's how I got involved with computers, with computer communication, with data communication, with networking, eventually leading to my sustained passion for connected mobility products and non-PC devices.
In almost every case, I was way ahead of the game. I was running a Bulletin Board Service (called CiX) in 1989 - years before the first online services appeared in India. An interesting side effect was that of my discovering electronic/online communities, and through them discovering Linux, Free and Open Source Software and the communities built around them.
I discovered how I could get things to work, getting help from unknown persons from the other side of the planet. My first ever Linux setup involved a cantankerous network card that refused to work with Linux - and finally did with the help of an unknown soul whom I wrote to, seeing his name and address in the source code of an ethernet driver. It was only many years later that I found out who Donald Becker was...
That incident resulted in my paying closer attention to FOSS communities, and later the core that they were built around - hackers.
Since those days, I have been constantly in touch with the technology community, sometimes leading from the front, sometimes following close behind. I have met countless people who have influenced my life in some way or the other, but none have been as influential as those who seek to make technology go beyond its defined limits. These were the people who had the same urge as I had - the people who weren't stopped by "You can't do that" or "That's impossible". The kind of people who'd say "Oh really?" and then proceed to prove everyone wrong.
These were hackers, in the truest spirit of the word, and not the negative image propagated by sensationalist press and clueless businessmen who don't understand that they wouldn't even have a business had it not been for the technologies created or extended by hackers.
In many ways, this is why I help bring FOSS.IN to life every year, why I used to write COMversations for PCQuest, why I go and speak to students at colleges, why I work at Geodesic, why I got involved in RadioVeRVe, why I encourage people to explore beyond the defined boundaries of technology.
The hacker mentality (which others have written about in ways far better than I ever could) is something that is sadly lacking in India. People are just not curious enough to find out more. They don't want to learn more than they need to - it's a "just enough" approach to learning that I totally abhor. And this results in a mediocre workforce, people who have to be micromanaged, who show no initiative or desire to change the world.
Now contrast this with the kind of people I meet when I go to an event like, for example, the Chaos Communication Congress, run by the Chaos Computer Club.
I meet people like Milosch Meriac and his wife Brita, who have been instrumental in many electronic feats - including porting Linux to the Xbox, creating opensourced RFID readers, getting a thousands of attendees at the 2006 CCC event to willingly tag themselves with devices that tracked their every move at the event, to being part of the team that brought the most recent Blinkenlights Project - Stereoscope to life in Toronto, Canada. And they are currently working on stuf that is so relevant to my work, it's not funny (I can't yet talk about it
I meet people like Harald Welte, whose own career is strewn with landmarks, from iptables/netfilter, through openmoko - the first free OS for smartphones - to bringing some of the world's largest corporations to their knees as he teaches them that the GPL is a valid license that they have to respect and follow. And all that while he is working on some unbelievably cool future technology that he is about to unleash on the world, while constantly learning more and more about the technologies he is extending beyond its limits.
These are just two samples of what I get exposed to at events like the Chaos Communication Congress. Now cast your eyes on this. See something you like? Something you'd give your arm for to be able to attend?
At events like this, I get to see stuff that wont be mainstream for years, but will change the world we live in. It will change the way we do business, the way we use technology. I meet radical technology thinkers, I get to talk to some of the smartest people in the world, and I learn from them, and I get infected by their enthusiasm. And I carry that spirit back with me, and that is why we have events like FOSS.IN, that's why people I work with start showing their true, innovative approach to technology as I try to enable them and give them the opportunities they had lacked so far, and why I try to get others in India to be like those fired up souls I meet, who come together every year at the Chaos Communication Congress, to share their experiences, to show their work, to learn new stuff and to be among the best.
So, you were asking why I am here?
You really should be asking yourself why *you* aren't. :)
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