"What can I make it do?" / developing a 'hacker mentality'

[Dan Q]

I don't normally do that whole crosspost/self-promotion "thing", but I just wrote a post to my site that I think might resonate with or inspire folks here. It's called: How an RM Nimbus Taught Me a Hacker Mentality, and it's basically the story of how, 30+ years ago, I hacked into my high school computer network, and what it taught me about technology, about the "hacker mentality", and about myself.

The short of it is that my school had these computers (kickass old website there, by the way!), and they were locked-down in a way to try to prevent anybody from introducing any unauthorised software to them or even running anything that wasn't on the "approved" list. So I taught myself enough of what was then called WordBasic (but went on to be called Visual Basic for Applications) that I could make Word document templates with buttons in them that would run whatever I want. Then I used that as a vehicle to stealing staff passwords so that I could introduce additional software onto the network, and gave my friends special Word documents that could run that software.

But it wasn't about being able to play Lemmings and Civilization when I was supposed to be doing coursework. That's what it was about for my friends, for sure, but for me it was about the challenge of asking "what can I make it do?" of these locked-down computers. Which is why, eventually, in order to escape from trying to pander to my classmates' neverending requests for access to more games and tools (which to me was a "solved problem": I'd done that bit!) - and lacking the self-confidence to just tell them so - I arranged for myself to "get caught".

The underlying thesis is that asking "what can I make it do?", not "what does it do?" of new technology is essential to the "hacker mindset". It's a kind of creativity and drive that leads to personal growth (and fascinating results).

And it's that "hacker mentality" that I see in the kind of Web and other arts produced by folks here. When you take CSS and ask "what can I make it do?", you're exhibiting a hacker mentality. And that's a wonderful thing.

The full blog post is over here, if that's the kind of thing that might interest you.