I'm a 23 year old with purple hair, but I'm also a PhD student at a top 10 university for computer science. I've hung out in tons of squats and punk houses, and briefly been a street kid, but I got a 2380 on my SATs. I lived in a non-residential warehouse for months - months when I was taking Physics, Linear Algebra, Computer Science and Sociology 321 - Class and Inequality. I've dug through dozens of dumpsters, and I've hiked hundreds and hundreds of miles on the Appalachian Trail. I've been in jail and won the prize for Best Undergraduate Research at my university.
I fell out of touch with the anarchopunkier half of my friends when I got serious about artificial intelligence and computer science - I love these things and they're very important to me, and in the coffeeshops we always talked about how to get rid of tyrants and inequality. I have always believed in technology. OLPC, Ubuntu, Khan Academy, Coursera, solar panels, cell networks - the list goes on.
Startup folks and street punks have a lot of similar ideas about what we want, but really different aesthetics. The punks I've known are much more well-read and just as bright as the grad students I spend time with now. On the other hand, they're in denial about capitalism. Both groups have a lot to learn from each other, if only they can look over the other's smarminess/smelliness.
Radical punk rock literally saved my life. As someone who's been a part of both of these worlds off and on for 16 years, I couldn't disagree with you more.
I see the aesthetics of the hacker and punk scenes as being extremely similar, where as the underlying motives are currently lightyears apart.
For instance, "hacker houses" and "collective houses" have a similar aesthetic. Both are about people living together, and sometimes the actual form even looks the same. But "hacker houses" fundamentally seem to be about "networking" and "making connections" to other entrepreneurs. Collective houses, on the other hand, are about building relationships -- precisely because it's so difficult to find meaningful connection in a world based on exchange. These two things look similar, but (having experienced both) I believe are radically different.
Another clear example is "hacker spaces" vs "social spaces." Again, the aesthetic is similar -- both are supposed to be "creative" spaces that have a similar logistical form. But what actually happens in both places is radically different. Anarchist "social spaces" are built on a social narrative for what people do there, where as "hacker space" activity (in the US, at least) is largely absent any kind of narrative. "Maker culture" in the US is based mostly on doing things that are "neat," and that's really the end of it. There are obvious exceptions, and the EU hacker culture has more of a narrative to it, but this is has been my experience on the whole.
I haven't had exposure to the hacker houses on the West Coast, so I can't really speak to that.
The motives of hackers I've known usually have to do with impacting the world and making it better for more people. I've been in punk houses with hackers, but we mostly had parties with art people, and collaborated with anarchists. I'm not talking about the Silicon Valley startup scene, which I know nothing about. I'm moving to MV in a month (to intern with an educational nonprofit), so I guess I'll find out.
I think I was probably wrong when I said 'startup folks', and I meant some other demographic - but it's a demographic of hackers that I've actually met in various places - Baltimore, Seattle, rural Washington state and Austin. And I (perhaps naively) thought that my various and scattered friends with a common ideological thread were representative of the makers of interesting things.
Perhaps my perspective is tainted by living in the bay area through two (three?) tech bubbles, however I still don't see it. I agree that HN-type hackers and anarchists both use aesthetically similar language, like "changing the world," but I think that means something substantially different in each context.
My sense is that when tech people talk about changing the world, they generally mean keeping the form of the world basically the same, but making it more efficient.
They use the language you're talking about -- they want to "change the world" ...with a commercial real-estate search engine! I'm sure that these folks are doing fine work, but really, the world is going to be fundamentally the same, it just might be a little easier to find commercial real-estate in it.
On the other hand, the anarchist basis is that fundamental aspects of society (police, prisons, judges, rulers, laws, taxes) were all the inventions of kings, which were later appropriated rather than destroyed. That it was a mistake to think it was possible to "change the world" simply by putting these same structures in the hands of different people, and that what's actually required is to eliminate them completely.
These, I think, are pretty different ways of conceptualizing that phrase.
I will agree that there are sometimes unusual intersections (the history of twitter, for instance).
My perspective is this: I want to make really awesome intelligent tutoring systems. I'm inspired by Enders Game, Diamond Age, and the Aristotle essay by Hillis.
I want to do this because I think that the current model for distributing education privileges people who are already very advantaged, but an intelligent tutoring system could be reproduced over and over and over for free. I obviously love Khan Academy, which is being made static and delivered to places with limited/no internet connection.
I think that this is radical because the vision is to use technology and the fact that things are so replicable to essentially destroy educational inequality. If you could make an educational system good enough, and distribute it widely enough, then I think that would really change the world. I want to be part of making that happen, and I'm an AI and cognitive science person, so I'm working on the tutor part.
But even this vision has so many things that other hackers are working on. Just making the net more efficient, or creating better wireless systems, or cheaper technology (or even better, technology that people can make themselves). Or empowering people to use Arduinos and to hack their own open source stuff. Or producing pedagogical content and translating it into other languages. I feel like a world in which everyone has total access to an amazing education is a world-changing proposition, and lots of hackers are working on things that really bring us closer to that.
Also I personally think that the thing that is wrong with the government is unequal application of laws and illegal hiding of government activity. I'm not convinced that there's not a place for laws, police, and taxes in a totally just society. I think that anyone who is working to destroy the (really widespread) lies and spying and unequal treatment and unjust policies and sociopathic violence of the government is doing something that, if it succeeds, will result in a truly different world. One where the laws aren't different for people depending on their class, and violence by the state is not tolerated.
I'm not claiming that working for education, diy technology, government accountability or a total overhaul of the legal system is more revolutionary than being an insurrectionist or running a totally awesome Food Not Bombs. I'm just saying that there's this idea of a better world, a fundamentally different world where things make sense and capricious cruelty is gone and everyone is essentially free to pursue the future they want and self-actualize instead of worrying about where the day's calories will come from or if it's safe to go outside. If we can have that world, I don't care if it's in an anarcho-syndicalist form, a set of independent microcountries, or just a very very reformed version of the constitutional democracies we have now. I see cheap, open source 3D printers and Food Not Bombs as having a similar mission.
I'll sum this up with a quote from an Evan Greer song
"I want something that's better than this, and I'm not sure exactly what it is, but I think that we could build it if we try together."
You don't have to defend yourself to me. I'm not saying you (or "hackers") are wrong or something, just that these are not necessarily shared beliefs among anarchists.
What you're describing is more akin to (classical) liberalism. For instance, here you draw on a couple of the core tenants of liberalism:
1) Equality. In the Jeffersonian sense (ie, under the law). This is really the cornerstone of liberalism. The classic structuralist response would be something like "Yes, yes... all men will be tried equally for the crime of stealing bread crumbs to feed their starving children."
2) Freedom of information. Also at the heart of liberalism is the idea that in a world where anyone can participate, speak, and think freely, we'll be able to select from a marketplace of ideas for how the world should look. The classic anarchist response is that we live in a specific political and economic reality that wasn't of our choosing, but which influences our desires, the way we think, how we think, and what we conceptualize as possible. Simply talking about other social or economic possibilities does not have the same effect, so just being able to speak freely is not necessarily meaningful in that context.
3) Transparency and accountability. A typical anarchist response to projects like wikileaks is something like "What is the value of truth in a world where we have no agency?" The insurrectionist, for example, doesn't attempt to shame, expose, or reform institutions of power, but rather expects their injustices as their fundamental nature. You can't blame a tiger for being a tiger.
It's true that it is possible to draw similarities in the sense that hackers and anarchists on the whole probably want "good things and not bad things." But to the extent that we're never fully going to get there, it's the tension that really matters, and that's where I believe the differences are currently quite deep between these two groups.
Best parties I've been to were a healthy blend of web folks, hippies, anarchists, engineers, and discordians.
I did observe that despite having fairly good classical training and historical knowledge--more than I had, certainly!--there did not seem to be a lot of self-educated people who knew physics and hard-sciences beyond a somewhat populist level. I suggest that this may be due theoretical physics and whatnot requiring a sounder grounding in mathematics than is easy to pick up on your own.
How did you connect with that crowd?
I've noticed a very high overlap between techies and hippies, there doesn't seem to be an easy way to stumble into a group of discordians short of randomly wandering the streets shouting "hail eris!".
Was drinking one night hanging out with some hippy friends (who I'd met in some computer science courses back at university, doing a software rasterization project). They mentioned a great place with a bunch of different folks, and said I should go. A few nights later I showed up with another friend, and that was that.
It was an amazingly chill party--young folks up through old hippies, people smoking out in the garage at the back of the lot, tech folks chatting about different projects in a kitchen, some other really far out stuff happening elsewhere.
I'd suggest that the big thing to do is to be relaxed, chill, and ask a lot of questions. Don't bore people with your own life if it doesn't enhance what they're talking about or if they don't ask, and keep your mind open to the idea that there is not one fixed path to happiness in life.
Don't brag or be condescending, do be friendly, and be helpful--basically, just be a decent person and doors will open.
EDIT: Addendum. I saw a few things happening that were probably not legal, and I certainly was a bit out of my element. That said, being okay with politely refusing offers that weren't my thing and not making trouble for other folks helped me fit in.
In the bay area, there's a constant stream of events that are in the spirit of the Cacophony Society - for example, http://allworldsfair.com/ , or the Lost Horizon Night Market ( http://blog.sfgate.com/inthemission/2010/12/13/guerrilla-nig... ) - and these things are put on by a community of people that's actually fairly small - I'm not sure they'd all self-identify as "Discordian" but, as a Discordian myself, I'll claim them.
This is seriously making me want to move to SF, because events as artfully crazy as these simply can't happen with any regularity in Singapore. There's just no cultural history for them to - no support or interest from the very pragmatic, have-to-be-up-early-tomorrow society over here. Sames goes for the very chill party mentioned by angersock: it just couldn't happen.
When I lived in Philadelphia I don't think there were regular events of that nature, so I guess it's mostly a Bay Area/SF thing? Manhattan certainly seemed more lively in that regard.
Also, having lived there myself for years, it's cold most of the year except in August and September, and because of its setting it's difficult to get to or from anywhere else (bridges and crowded freeways). And finally, it's very pretty and it has enormous charm.
To varying degrees you get this stuff in Austin, Portland, Seattle, Brooklyn...
And actually I've seen parties like the one angersock describes in places like Bloomington, Indiana and Huntsville, Alabama - it's a matter of knowing the right people, there's a network of social connections. I don't know if it reaches to Singapore, but it doesn't sound impossible to me.
I agree - I think it's somewhat cultural. That community has a lot of good ideas, but few fleshed-out solutions, which are harder and require more technical/modeling skills. It's hardly unique to them - education researchers (for instance, as I've been noticing recently) and many administrators are equally quantitatively lacking. Part of it may also be that doing novel critical analysis requires few resources, but doing most novel science is a high-capital endeavor.
I'm not sure that being quantitatively lacking is a bad thing--but certainly you need to have those folks in contact with more implementation-capable minds to help!
I saw something similar at my local Occupy protests--once we'd put in a somewhat more concrete intellectual framework for discussing grievances, things became a lot more productive.
Hit me up on email if you'd like to chat more about these things.
But be honest: part of the reason you lived that lifestyle was how romantic it is. If there were a more sexy way to convince young people that you don't have to sleep in a dank moldy shell of a building and eat out of dumpsters to have a positive effect on the world, there'd be less of this type of living-off-the-land. I'm glad you bought into capitalism, too :)
> On the other hand, they're in denial about capitalism.
Could you expand on the flaws in their disdain of capitalism? Or, if that's too broad a question, perhaps direct us to some reading material on the subject?
I don't mean this in a snarky or side-taking manner... in fact I'm struggling with my own views on capitalism and would love to expand my knowledge on the issue.
So part of the problem is their alternatives to capitalism. Which are mostly primitivist (as in, destroy infrastructure) communist (in the central planning, grey way depicted in i.e. The Dispossessed) or just kinda goofy. As a lifestyle choice, living off the refuse of a bloated and exorbitant society is actually quite sustainable until you need serious healthcare. As something for everybody to do, a new way of governing, it fails because there will be no society from which to absorb the waste. I think efforts to establish autonomous, non-hierarchal, consensus-based organizations or communities within capitalism is awesome. But ultimately, seven billion people are never going to form some totally sweet Zapatista-style worldwide commune. At that scale, the markets are going to be at work. Capitalism is inevitable.
My perspective is that appropriate solutions to this problem involve taxing externalities (pollution, murderous working conditions that cost society), and reducing the cronyism and corruption that breaks capitalism. Also deciding as a society that we are better off if people are not involuntarily homeless or hungry or dying and agreeing on a social contract to provide welfare.
I want to make the world a better place, so I choose to work on making more, better, cheaper, smarter education available to everyone everywhere. And from society's perspective, this is actually a good investment because it increases human capital and also reduces future costs (as educated folks have fewer kids).
I love communist farms and kibbutzim and I can absolutely imagine living on one and participating in one of those societies. And if you hate capitalism, that's a good way to protect yourself from it. But the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system.
As someone who's just recently read The Dispossessed, I would be remiss if I did not correct your characterization of it. The lunar society in that book is quite clearly anarcho-syndicalist. Much of the conflict early in the story stems from the syndicate structure of that society.
This should not be confused with Soviet-style centrally planned, state-capitalist, 'Communism' if that's what your acquaintances called it. It should also not be confused with actual communism, i.e. a classless, moneyless, stateless social order.
>Capitalism is inevitable.
Spoken like a true capitalist. Fukuyama would be so proud.
>the farms and kibbutzim themselves are still participants in a larger capitalist system
If the revolutionaries had their way, they wouldn't have to be.
Well, the premise of The Dispossessed is that the anarcho-syndicalist society actually becomes an oppressive monolithic power. As a result, the protagonist is unable to find an outlet for his special talents, and has to turn to other means of success.
I thought The Dispossessed did a very good job of showing the problems with centralization of planning - it's an attempt at an anarcho-syndicalist commune that self-defeats through strict social mores. I do think that syndicalism is probably the best vision I've seen for an anarchist future - but ultimately, either those syndicates would have to participate in capitalist trade, or they would have to be controlled by some governing body, or they would have to be totally self-sustaining. Just think about how difficult-to-produce drugs would be distributed between communities. There can't be a producer in each one. So are the producers of that drug going to just gift it? How can they sustain themselves if they are making something difficult to produce that they are only consuming a tiny portion of? Well maybe because they are so generous they will get many gifts. This is starting to sound a lot like something that either has to be a market or centrally planned to me.
I fell out of touch with the anarchopunkier half of my friends when I got serious about artificial intelligence and computer science - I love these things and they're very important to me, and in the coffeeshops we always talked about how to get rid of tyrants and inequality. I have always believed in technology. OLPC, Ubuntu, Khan Academy, Coursera, solar panels, cell networks - the list goes on.
Startup folks and street punks have a lot of similar ideas about what we want, but really different aesthetics. The punks I've known are much more well-read and just as bright as the grad students I spend time with now. On the other hand, they're in denial about capitalism. Both groups have a lot to learn from each other, if only they can look over the other's smarminess/smelliness.