While it's great that any member of staff can create a database, the IT department is then expected to maintain and repair it. The avalanche of applications can quickly become overwhelming - and sometimes they can overlap significantly, leading to inefficient overspending and further maintenance nightmares. For these and a hundred other reasons, purchasing needs to be planned.

This business model does not need, or even more it is prohibited, by an alternative Application Pattern, a pattern that it is Human centric, Human scale, that puts you in the center and does not see you as a data generation unit aggregated inside a giant swarm of people.

Personally, I think the people at Facebook made a stellar product. It's creepy how much they know about us, even creepier how much they care about this information, and scary that they are sharing it with governments. But it's also wonderful to be able to find nearly anyone in the world, contact them immediately, set up events, share media, etc. They have build a robust, incredibly impressive and functional platform that gets better every day.

Security. How hack-proof is Ello? Is the code going to be open sourced? How will we know if/when they are working with the NSA?

Hacking, in my world, is a route to escaping the shackles of the profit-fetish, not a route to profit.

the true hacker spirit does not reside at Google, guided by profit targets

The gentrification of hacking is… well, perhaps a perfect hack.

And before you know it, an earnest Stanford grad is handing me a business card that says, without irony: ‘Founder. Investor. Hacker.’

This process of gentrification becomes a war over language

This doublethink bleeds through into mainstream corporate culture, with the growing institution of the corporate ‘hackathon’

And so we see a gradual stripping away of the critical connotations of hacking. Who said a hacker can’t be in a position of power? Google cloaks itself in a quirky ‘hacker’ identity, with grown adults playing ping pong on green AstroTurf in the cafeteria, presiding over the company’s overarching agenda of network control.

‘hacking’ as quirky-but-edgy innovation by optimistic entrepreneurs with a love of getting things done

the revised definition of the tech startup entrepreneur as a hacker forms part of an emergent system of Silicon Valley doublethink

The countercultural trickster has been pressed into the service of the preppy tech entrepreneur class.

Here is where the second form of corruption begins to emerge. The construct of the ‘good hacker’ has paid off in unexpected ways, because in our computerised world we have also seen the emergence of a huge, aggressively competitive technology industry with a serious innovation obsession. This is the realm of startups, venture capitalists, and shiny corporate research and development departments. And, it is here, in subcultures such as Silicon Valley, that we find a rebel spirit succumbing to perhaps the only force that could destroy it: gentrification.

In the context of a complex system – computer, financial or underground transit – the political divide is always between well-organised, active insiders versus diffuse, passive outsiders. Hackers challenge the binary by seeking access, either by literally ‘cracking’ boundaries – breaking in – or by redefining the lines between those with permission and those without. We might call this appropriation.

Thus a single manifestation of a single element of the original spirit gets passed off as the whole.

Despite the hive-mind connotations of faceless groups such as Anonymous, the archetype of ‘the hacker’ is essentially that of an individual attempting to live an empowered and unalienated life. It is outsider in spirit, seeking empowerment outside the terms set by the mainstream establishment.

I was attracted to the hacker archetype because, unlike the straightforward activist who defines himself in direct opposition to existing systems, hackers work obliquely. The hacker is ambiguous, specialising in deviance from established boundaries, including ideological battle lines. It’s a trickster spirit, subversive and hard to pin down. And, arguably, rather than aiming towards some specific reformist end, the hacker spirit is a ‘way of being’, an attitude towards the world.

For all his protestations of innocence, it’s clear that Draper’s curiosity was essentially subversive. It represented a threat to the ordered lines of power within the system. The phreakers were trying to open up information infrastructure, and in doing so they showed a calculated disregard for the authorities that dominated it.

For all his protestations of innocence, it’s clear that Draper’s curiosity was essentially subversive. It represented a threat to the ordered lines of power within the system. The phreakers were trying to open up information infrastructure, and in doing so they showed a calculated disregard for the authorities that dominated it.

The internet promises open access to information and online assembly for individual computer owners. At the same time, it serves as a tool for corporate monopolists and government surveillance.