Reading “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance”, p.98:

The selfish climber does it to prove themselves. The selfless climber does it to appreciate the beauty of every step, of every leaf and moment. They do it in tune with the moutain and the moment.

I’m a computer hacker.

I always thought hacking was purely a technical challenge, a matter of cold knowledge and experience. Then it became a job, what pays the bills and gives me some form of satisfaction.

But that’s not the whole picture.

I came to the realisation that deep down, what I want to do, what drives me, is appreciation of beauty.

I admire hacking in its purest form. When I stumble upon a masterpiece - someone’s clever piece of work - I strive to appreciate its beauty; I must have enough knowledge to understand its cleverness, and I will use this newly acquired knowledge for my own creations.

I don’t want to make a generalisation; I don’t want to say, “true hackers are those who-“ and start drawing circles and putting up barriers and complain about what others don’t do. However, I know what works forme - and what drives me is the joy of overcoming barriers, the sense of achievement of an exploit well done, of controlling execution, of bending a program to do something powerful that was not in its original designer’s mind.

The ultimate goal is the exploit, but the real beauty is in the creation, and like a selfless climber, the contemplation of each step of the journey.

In Neuromancer, William Gibson defines the protagonist as an “artiste”. This was before hacking became a definition.

I am an artist. My art is creation of solutions to interesting problems. I seek beauty; be it the logical beauty of code, or cleverness of reasoning, or quality of exploitation. I can’t do what I don’t understand, because to me, understanding is searching for meaning.

Hacking is art, my art.

hacking

art

beauty