The hacker ethic, openness, and sustainability

Sustainability is a normative concept, building on ideas such as justice, equity and responsibility, and based on human culture and society [14]. Computers and internet and the technologies that are central in our current societal paradigm of informationalism [23] are not value-free neither. They embed normative values and a culture that can be understood both from the historical origins of the technology and the current community around it. But the work looking at computer technology and sustainability has been oriented towards practical applications for solving practical problems, and it has overlooked the more normative and ethical perspectives. The research have focused either at understanding the negative direct impacts of hardware such as energy use of internet and the generation of e-waste [1,2], or at the applications of using the technologies with a sustainability purpose, such as increasing the efficiency of systems and increasing dematerialization or triggering behavioral change [3,4]. Computers and internet are treated either as a system to be understood, or as tools that can be used for some purpose. The set of values that has been central to the development of the personal computer as we know it is the hacker ethic. Being a hacker, is being someone that "program enthusiastically" and who believe that computing and information sharing is a positive good", and that it is their ethical duty to facilitate access [5]. This is not to be confused with the use of the term in media and popular culture, where it is used mostly connected to cybercriminals, computer experts that steal credit card numbers and break in security systems [6]. The hacker ethic originated at MIT and developed in academia during the second half of the nineteenth century (See Levy's historical account [7] and Raymond's brief history of hackerdom [8]), and it contains a set of values and norm that were embodied in their work [9]: 1. Hands on imperative: Access to computers should be unlimited and total.