There are many types of hackers. Those that are motivated by transparency, cooperation, sharing, open source etc have my full backing, even if their actions against corporations are sometimes 'illegal'. But in fact many times their actions against corporations could also be considered helpful (to the corporations) in exposing sloppy thinking, loose security and the exposing of ever-present bullshit. These 'hackers' I exchange ideas with regularly.
Those hackers motivated by greed and destruction are a different breed. They are vandals. But I do track what they do, because they are part of the technoscape, just as taggers are part of the cityscape. But dignity is not in their vocabulary.
I don't read Virpi Salmi, but from what I've been told she's a lightweight. Her article, which you cite, basically says Himanen's paper is a 'toilet book'. I presume her interests mesh with the National Coalition party - the closest we have to neo-libs in Finland.
And they are already inserting their pointed sticks into Tekes - the funding funnel for the SHOKs - presumably because they think the Center Party is currently weak (which it is). They are trying to cut funding to the SHOKs and I heard some of the nasty political background this morning. The other parties, except for the Swedish Peoples Party, are totally clueless.
However, industry and the research institutions have been talking intensely about these cooperative innovation consortiums for two years and my guess is that the impetus may be unstoppable. We'll have to wait and see.
There's a SHOK conference in Helsinki on 23.04, after which we'll know where these initiatives are heading. You can't be me, I'm taken
Good luck on your SHOK conference in April. I'll be awaiting further posts to follow the progress. Hopefully, positive momentum will be on your side and something good will happen rather than the usual rhetoric that often dominates such events.
Off topic: I think I saw you in the comments of a "Food is the best medicine'" diary where you were looking for kombu and nori? Tokyokan on Annankatu 20 downtown has all that good stuff. Ruohonjuuri at Kamppi also has a good selection of seaweed stuff.
And finally, rest assured that the hacker of whom I spoke previously definitely is one who relishes in his ability to expose sloppy thinking, loose security, and ever-present bullshit.
The 'usual rhetoric' will surely be amply supplied. I gave a little lecture on technocratese today. But then I've been working for years with these high level engineers (who I'd rather have running things than any lawyers). You just have to argue points with them rather differently than with the lawyers. And then argue them again. With diagrams.
My regards to your hacker. You can't be me, I'm taken
As for you being 'just a maalaispoika,' hey, that's a good thing. Minä olen juuri maalaisnainen nyt myos. But I thought you said your 'hood was Kallio? And isn't that near Crazy Curve, on the #6 line, near downtown?
