Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism articulated the animating spirit of the Industrial Age, known ever since as the Protestant work ethic. Now, Pekka Himanen articulates a new, opposing cultural logic, born of the Information Age and rapidly gaining force. The Internet, e-mail, the first personal computers — all were created by hackers. As more of our work becomes hacker work, hacker values — faith in the power of free and open information, rejection of rigid time divisions, and propagation of a new social model organized around the spirit of play and the economy of free exchange — bleed out into the world and change consciousness in radical ways, as this epochal book so brilliantly explains.
The Hacker Ethic
Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism articulated the animating spirit of the Industrial Age, known ever since as the Protestant work ethic. Now, Pekka Himanen articulates a new, opposing cultural logic, born of the Information Age and rapidly gaining force. The Internet, e-mail, the first personal computers — all were created by hackers. As more of our work becomes hacker work, hacker values — faith in the power of free and open information, rejection of rigid time divisions, and propagation of a new social model organized around the spirit of play and the economy of free exchange — bleed out into the world and change consciousness in radical ways, as this epochal book so brilliantly explains.