Comment by rayiner
12 years ago
The world in which Jobs and Gates grew up was very different, one in which computers didn't play as vital a role in everyday life, and compromising a computer system could cause less in the way of damage, simply because people did not rely on them as heavily. In our modern world, saying that young people should be free to break and exploit systems has very different implications.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes, and we certainly don't argue that universities have a moral obligation to support such "learning." So why should it be different in the digital world? There was a time maybe when we tolerated that because you could do a lot less damage breaking into a computer than breaking into a house, but that time is long gone.
We do not tolerate young people "learning" how to pick locks by breaking into peoples' homes...
"Due to the top secret nature of the work, Los Alamos was isolated. In Feynman's own words, 'There wasn't anything to do there'. Bored, he indulged his curiosity by learning to pick the combination locks on cabinets and desks used to secure papers."
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Feynman#The_Manhattan_...
Be careful what you wish for. History has shown that countries which are free to think will eventually outthink those that aren't. And what you're arguing for is restriction of thought.
You're free to think whatever you want. This is about interfering with other peoples' property.
Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other peoples' property.
The stuff Bill and Steve did--they did it because they were smart kids and could get away with it. But saying it was a necessary component of their future success is just romanticization.
Perhaps these "other people" who don't want their property "interfered with" should not wantonly hook it up to a global communications network full of anonymous actors. In an ideal world the law would quickly change to match the reality of an unaccountable network, hacking itself would be legal, and only specific intended harm caused by it would be a crime.
The problem here stems from young being people more in touch with actual reality, as they haven't been beaten down by society to respect arbitrary social mores. So they take risks doing things that seemingly should have no consequence - like smoking marijuana or sending nonstandard signals over communication networks. And so a few unlucky ones get caught, and the best they can currently hope for is to have an institution that will go to bat and isolate them from the "real world" of public persecutors' scoreboards.
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"Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering."
Tinkering is exactly what got us Linux, what got us Unix, and what got us radio communication and x-rays.
So, no, I do believe you are mistaken.
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> Personally, I think people over-romanticize hacker culture in saying it's a key part of technological progress. Scientific advancement is a process that overwhelmingly happens purposefully, not through tinkering. It's DARPA funding defense contractors to invent TCP/IP, not some kids "learning" by breaking into other peoples' property.
It's hacker culture that created GNU/Linux (and lots of other free software), not DARPA's funding.
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A lot of the major game-changing breakthroughs result from tinkering. Feynman was already cited above; he attributes his Nobel-winning work to a silly question motivated by watching plates wobble in the cafeteria, or some such thing.
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?id=2698
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People's "property".
I'd say a university should support students learning to pick locks by ignoring (as long as no particular damage was caused) them using campus locks for practice.