Week 6 Lecture Response: Me... A Hacker?

In week six of lecture, Professor Stockwell talked about how our generation is becoming hackers without even knowing it.  In other words, “citizen hacking” is becoming very common now these days. Stockwell isn’t proposing that we all have the capacity to break through the firewalls of government, corporate and security service networks.  But rather, I believe he was suggesting that there is a new ‘hacker ethos’ that applies to those who are repurposing the media machine to open and extend debate beyond traditional national and social borders.

He says that: This new form of politics connects to its public via “viral campaigning” using music, humour, fuzzy logic, ambush promotion and interactivity to infect populations with arguments that generate political debate and take off on a life of their own (Stockwell 2008:8).

Stockwell is inferring that by merely clicking on a youtube video, watching it, and sharing it with a larger audience, you, yourself, have become a citizen hacker by posting a specific item or concept online for others to see.  Shocking, right?  Looks like we’re all guilt of “citizen hacking” then!    

Blankenship, L. 1986. The Hacker Manifesto http://www.yak.net/fqa/120.html  accessed 30 August 2012.