The readings portray a hacker as someone whose curiosity and desire to understand is ceaseless. The phrase “the curiosity killed the cat” is a bit too applicable to some hackers who just can’t seem to stop themselves. Some well-intended hackers can cross the line when breaking into others’ systems. However, my definition of a hacker is not so much someone who seeks to break into other people’s systems as the general population believes as it is a person who is constantly learning and constantly trying to push the bounds of their own knowledge as well as the collective community’s knowledge. For example, I would certainly classify this man as a “hacker”: http://www.bloomberg.com/features/2015-george-hotz-self-driving-car/. While we normally associate self-driving cars with extraordinary complexity, and rightly so, this man single-handedly added self-driving functionality to his own vehicle, albeit limited. Pushing your own abilities beyond either your own or the community’s boundaries is what I believe makes you a hacker.
In many ways, being a “hacker” is important and useful. For example, knowing how to hack into servers and websites prepares you and your company to better combat others with such knowledge who could potentially use their abilities to overtake your systems. If you have never experimented with security and only faintly understand the attacks that may come in from the outside, you are very likely to be vulnerable. I am certainly not justifying people who hack companies’ systems, because there are other, moral ways such as creating a testing environment of your own and trying to hack into your own environment with the same methodologies. This way you can still figure things out for yourself first-hand without putting others at risk. Many of the readings make the hacker community sound very concrete, and that all hackers are actively a part of this community. I think that many hackers gravitate toward this community of like-minded individuals, but I don’t necessarily think all hackers are actively engaged in this community and behave in exactly the same ways. I don’t know that I would fully consider myself a hacker, but I also wouldn’t say with certainty that I am not. However, I do know that I am not an active member of the hacker community. Instead, I enjoy trying out new languages and technologies for myself, although I am certainly not approaching the cutting edge or in danger of any true break-throughs. Overall, I do agree with Paul Grahm in “The Word ‘Hacker’” that the hacker culture is important and that it is becoming threatened. For many companies, it is in their best interest to encourage the hacker culture. I believe many innovations do result from people trying to see if they can expand the realm of “possible”. Additionally, people should not be penalized for learning how things work internally, so long as they are not destroying the property of others. I think it is difficult to pin down the archetype of a hacker. In general, they seek to learn new things, work around blockers, have an insatiable curiosity and a desire to build and create new things. To this end, I believe I am a hacker, even though that was never my primary goal but is instead simply a characterization that describes my interactions with programming and new technologies.
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I do not believe programming is a super-power, but I do believe it is very empowering. There are a few reasons for this belief. Naturally, I believe super-powers are unique and super or extra-ordinary. Similar to the "if everyone is special, no one is" argument, I don't think everyone could have super-powers and still call them super. Another connotation I have with super powers is that they do not come about through training and deliberate actions. Rather, they are generally thought of as being innate or accidental. It is precisely the great accessibility people have to programming that reduces is "super" power. I say this even though the accessibility is one of the best features of programming: the fact that high school dropouts can excel in programming, that those who put their mind to it can learn it, even if they have no prior experience. Furthermore, super powers can generally be used on-demand - they do not take hours, days, or even years to produce a noticeable effect. Even though programming has the ability to bring to life software that has the ability to rapidly bring about changes in society and human behavior, to my knowledge we have never considered other engineering disciplines super powers. Even though mechanical engineers build engines that power cars and planes and civil engineers design bridges and roadways that influence human behavior and entire economies, we do not consider these "super". For consistency due to the similarities, I am unable to classify programming as a super power.
On the other hand, programming does share many characteristics with super powers, which is why I firmly believe that programming has the ability to empower people. For example, programming does have the capacity to impact many people. It can change people's lives, the way they view the world, make them more safe, and can do things that were previously thought to be impossible. It can also be used for either good or evil, as can super-powers. It is very empowering that people have the ability and capacity to learn how to program to bring about change in the world. If programming were a super power, it is implied that only a small portion of the population has the ability to program, and that it it is difficult or impossible for others to gain the ability to program, which I do not believe is true. Programming also brings about change in a different way than traditional super-powers. Where traditional powers enable people to fly, fight with super-human strength, and move with super-human speed, programming does not quite directly affect humans in the same way, but instead can provide unprecedented levels of intelligence and analysis that we can then use and act upon. By claiming that programming is not a super power, I am not at all saying that I don't believe it has the ability to bring about enormous change. Instead, I believe we can all learn to program to help bring about the changes we want to see in the world. My name is Luke Garrison and I am a senior computer science major at Notre Dame. I am from Fort Wayne, IN and and grew up as a huge Notre Dame fan. Enjoying and excelling in math in science from a young age, I gravitated toward engineering, especially mechanical. In high school, I became curious about programming and wrote a few very basic C programs on my own. Although I did not pursue it further, my interest in computer science remained with through intro to engineering. After learning about the vast different specialties and concentrations available within computer science, my major decision became clear.
Ever since, my passion to learn and to share what I have learned with others has only grown. I have been continuously inspired by constant technological breakthroughs and I hope to improve the well-being of others through my software after graduation. Some of my favorite courses so far include databases, data structures, unix, and programming paradigms. I have really enjoyed learning about the API layer of websites and experiencing full stack development in side projects. Although I haven't learned any front-end technologies in my courses, I have really enjoyed working with javascript front-end technologies such as AngularJS and putting thought into architecting the front-end. I have been disappointed that there are not more opportunities to learn about creating scalable servers and RESTful API's through courses at Notre Dame since these are so important to so many companies' products. In this class, I hope to challenge myself and give more thought to the "why" and "should" questions instead of restricting myself to questions of "what" and how". By the end of the course, I hope to have spent time contemplating the ethical issues that surround countless topics in computer science, and I seek to prepare myself to make the right choices out in the real world. I am especially interested in considering topics such as intellectual property, digital life, security, privacy, connectivity and freedom of speech. I hope that in addition to contemplating the aforementioned topics on my own, we will also have ample opportunities to share our thoughts on topics in class in a healthy manner. Even though I enjoy software engineering, it's applications still make me nervous at times. For example, the sheer amount of data companies such as Google and Facebook have about me and others is astonishing. While I like the features and functionality they offer, something still feels wrong about how much data they collect. Specifically, I switched to Google Photos a few months ago because it offers unlimited storage of photos and has fancy features such as searching for photos by location, contents, or people. However, such advanced features and convenience come at a price - the app now has hundreds and thousands of pictures of me and the locations of where the pictures were taken. Data security is also an important issue. Giving companies sensitive information requires me to trust them. My health insurance provider was hacked last year, which means now my personal information including address information and social security number are no longer safe and are likely in the wrong hands. When things work all seems great, but it is amazing how quickly things can go wrong when systems fail. And most importantly, just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. |
AuthorSenior computer science major at the University of Notre Dame ArchivesCategories |