on SIGINT10 (Cologne, 22.-24.05.2010) was Nick Farr a lecture in which he discussed the advantages that would accrue to his opinion, if "hackers" the political work would take over. It is already
lack the basic condition: While programmers: are (here hackers as the most gifted programmers) the system on the outside, so do not constitute a part of it, this is not for politicians. You are inherent elements of the political system and thus directly affected by the changes to the system. That may be one of the reasons that lead to the well-known, sometimes growing soft "political speech". (Farr spoke of politicians as liars who tell lies politely while his view, hackers say rather rude truths ...)
A programmer can, for example, because it is not an integral part of the system he considered this in accordance with its possibilities test, edit, change, bring as a test crash, in order to draw conclusions about underlying error, etc. It is even from the effects of these tests are not affected. The program crashes, it can modify the code and begin testing again. Politicians on the other hand directly subject to the effects of their actions. So time-term radical political decisions sometimes radical social reactions, leading at best to a "dismissal" of the politician. Considering the parallels to the programmers who would not after a failed test program (only) this fall, but also the programmers ... ;-)
Another criticism arises from the fundamental difference between the respective system components (software here, community / administrative apparatus is there). Hardware and software components, program elements / functions / subroutines etc. have not own intentions, they can be deleted easily change them if necessary. Public authorities and the political establishment, however respond independently (and sometimes unpredictable), they can not be manipulated at will. This applies also to other institutions and authorities areas which are constituted by the respective employees. Such systems have limited capacity to influence. Thus, for example, instructions are interpreted differently than intended by the creator, work orders can delay any (one may have as an applicant on the "Office" already experienced times), or one is simply "not responsible".
Already these two points should be cause some skepticism regarding the idea, political work with the programming methods (here means, of hacking) to afford. A receiver of the talk was also to be considered in the discussion that hackers could not explain quite often (especially to non-hackers). Political work is just at the high part of "sales activity" (compared with whomever). However, that programmers are perhaps the first choice for the sale is not always shown by the fact that development and sales in software companies are mostly carried out by separate departments.
All this, of course, speaks not at all against political activity by programmers / hackers! Them live democracy! The above note is to warn against too clueless to want to transfer the mentality of the political hackerdom business. Where of course against the basic intention Farr, ie only make decisions if you understand a situation really through and through, really mean anything is wrong with.
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