Old and New Together

The one thing that is definitely not new in our lives is the steady conflict between old and new, which has been going on for as long as we've had a society.  For the most part, it's a pointless battle based predominantly on emotion that tends to only make opposing sides dig their heels in ever deeper.  And it happens to exist everywhere.

Life used to be simpler.  Music was more original and had a richer sound.  Movies were better made and books better written.

Or... life is now much more exciting.  Music is more diverse and accessible, while movies appeal to more specific audiences and books can be published by anyone with something to say.

It's all a matter of perspective and, if you find yourself always agreeing with one side, you're likely a zealot for nostalgia or for modernization.  As hackers, we get to see this in all sorts of interesting ways that often predate when the mainstream gets a clue - if it ever does.  That's not too surprising when dealing with the development and exploitation of new technology.  What we need to be careful of is not seeing the bigger picture when caught up in all of the excitement.

Hackers have always had an identity crisis, albeit one that was mostly imposed from the outside.  The media delights in blaming everything even remotely technology-related on hackers - without taking the slightest bit of time to investigate what a hacker actually is.  We're even credited for hypothetical calamities that haven't happened yet (i.e., what would a hacker do if this bit of information about you got out or if this piece of technology failed?).  So we can't really blame people who are reluctant to be known as hackers.  Nor can we fault those who want to expel the perceived offenders from a community they feel belongs to them.  We saw this a number of years ago when groups of older hackers attempted to distance themselves from younger hackers by coming up with a new word for them: crackers.  That was meant to distinguish the good, law-abiding hackers from the out-of-control, lawbreaking individuals who were getting all of the attention and ruining the overall perception of hacking.  Of course, those definitions were flawed, over-generalized, and applied unevenly.  And whether or not the age factor was intentional is irrelevant.  The whole thing basically turned into another inevitable example of old versus new, helped along by a little media ignorance.

Of course, simply creating a new word for an element of a community is just another way of replicating what those outside the community are doing with their complete lack of knowledge.  By engaging in simplifications, labeling individuals en masse, and basically demonizing those who don't agree with you, the community often becomes irreparably fractured and segmented.

Fortunately, that whole "cracker" thing never really went anywhere.  Hackers are still vilified at every turn, but there has been a concerted effort to fight the stereotypes and correct the uninformed - or expose those with a destructive agenda.  There will always be those who want to label and subdivide the hacker community (words like "white hat" and "black hat" are great examples of this), but it just isn't that simple.  There are good and bad elements everywhere, as well as benevolent and evil ways of using any technology or bit of information.  The concept of hacking takes a more neutral view, a view that questions our default assumptions on what is and isn't possible, as well as what is right and what is wrong.

For example, are hackers criminals?  Certainly they aren't as a rule.  But what if they meet the definition because the law is wrong?  Is being that kind of a criminal necessarily a bad thing?  Without having this internal dialogue, it becomes very easy to think of all hackers as a threat and to let one's fears kick in.

We find that in any community, far more often than not, there are so many similarities and common interests spread throughout that this sort of division ought to be avoided at all costs.  As one example, the conversations that we've witnessed when young phone phreaks and older phone company employees are brought together is inspirational.  Even though they're on opposite sides of the fence, they all have an appreciation and understanding of the technology that's being used - and they all benefit from this.  That enthusiasm and knowledge is available for the sharing - until fear and suspicion become stronger forces.  It's clear which relationship is healthier and more productive.

Returning to the concept of old and new, there are many parallels to the schisms we've seen over the years.  We too often witness proponents of new tech blindly rejecting anything that's older, whether it's a typewriter or last year's iPhone.  We also see resolute hostility towards new developments from those who want to keep things the way they were.  Of course, both of these viewpoints are counterproductive and woefully misguided.

Let's look at our language for some guidance.  To this day, we continue to use the word "dial" when giving out phone numbers.  We "tape" programs on our DVRs.  We "carbon copy" our emails, "film" with our digital cameras, and sit back to watch the "tube" when we're done, even though it's likely there's no actual picture tube within miles.

These outdated words that we all know the meaning of indicate a certain unwillingness to completely let go of the past.  We could easily come up with replacement phrases and strictly use them instead.  Yet we don't.  Because not only would we be symbolically severing those links, but we'd be intimidating and alienating the slower adopters of new technology with this jargon.  And by doing that, we'd actually be slowing down our overall progress since there would be stronger resistance to it.  In language, we recognize that links to the past are essential.

Understanding this concept with words is one thing.  We need to go further and understand it in practice as well.

Cell phones are a great convenience, far more so than landlines.  But when there are power outages or reception issues, a landline becomes invaluable.  The voice quality is also far better as a rule.  But perhaps the best thing about that old bit of technology is that you can open it up and figure out how it works.  It's not likely many people can do that with the massive amount of computing power sitting in their pocket.  If it breaks, they will likely be advised to just get another one.  As hackers, understanding how something works and being able to take it apart and put it back together again are essential abilities.

Rejecting the new devices with all of their capabilities is foolish.  The amount of usefulness a single smartphone can provide is truly staggering.  But it's at least as foolish to turn a blind eye towards the tech that helped make this possible in the first place.  Understanding the design and challenges of older equipment is how you learn to come up with something better.  Skip that part and you're cheating yourself out of a much more thorough understanding.

The same is naturally true of computers as well, both with hardware and software.  It may seem pointless to learn about an old computer with a clock rate of two megahertz and a couple of floppy drives, but you will, at the least, appreciate how quickly technology can change - and hopefully apply that thought process to today, rather than just follow the instructions for the advanced machine you're currently using.  And, while it's great to have an intelligent, graphically sophisticated operating system, it's really important to get down to the command line and see the power that a few well placed commands can give you even to this day.  Learning UNIX is a great way to move towards achieving this.  Its continued importance to the hacker community is the perfect example of the integration of old and new.

There is a danger in too carelessly discarding a means of doing something in favor of something with more apparent advantages.  The cost could be the loss of something priceless.  Creating digital versions of media from books to photos to movies is an indisputable enhancement of the original work, one that should be embraced.  But to completely replace the older standards is ill-advised, as we simply don't know enough about the longevity of our new technology.

Technology is only going to become faster and more all-encompassing.  We need to be careful not to take it all for granted and become overly dependent.  If something were to happen to your phone, could you still communicate?  Can you write a sentence without relying on a spell checker?  Are you able to multiply without a calculator?  Can you find the stars in the sky without an app?  The list goes on and on, but the basic idea is that simply making the knowledge available on a device is very different from learning how to get the knowledge or understanding what it actually means.  We risk having an abundance of facts without having enough wisdom.