This morning I was sent a link to a Ted Talk featuring Catherine Bracy, Why Good Hackers Make Good Citizens. A good friend thought I would be interested in this video since I write for this blog and they were right! In my life I like to look at the big picture and see what is beyond the painting or lyrics, what is the meaning of the words or imagery? It helps keep my mind open and fresh as an intellectual.
This Ted Talk was right up my alley and took a different
approach to the term “hacker” and opened my eyes to a new term: “civic hacker.”
A civic hacker is someone who sees a problem and wants to figure out a solution
to make it better, improve a way of life or make a change for the greater good
of society.
She calls out Benjamin Franklin as a civic hacker, he
invented so many things that we use everyday, however he invented something
that is life saving and yet not something that immediately comes to mind when
you think of the only non-president to grace a US currency note. He invented
the first volunteer
fire department. He recognized that Philadelphia’s fire department was
struggling to put out fires in a timely manner, which was very troubling to him
and he looked at the situation and thought there was room for improvement.
In 1733 he addressed this problem and a new concept to the
city in the newspaper the Pennsylvania Gazette.
"Soon after it [a
fire] is seen and cry'd out, the Place is crowded by active Men of different
Ages, Professions and Titles who, as of one Mind and Rank, apply themselves
with all Vigilance and Resolution, according to their Abilities, to the hard
Work of conquering the increasing fire."
This action of civic hacking took a concept that existed and
through innovation, improved on it to the point that it ended up
revolutionizing the way we fight fires in America today. Growing up in a small
town, we did not have a full time fire department; we had a volunteer fire
department made up of men and women from all walks of life that would go into
action when called upon.
The theory that Bracy presented of a hacker simply being someone
who simply looks at something and makes improvements, it raised a question in
my mind, who else could be considered a hacker? Henry Ford, Nikola Tesla, John
D. Rockefeller, Andrew Carnegie, and so many leaders of industry took a concept
and improved it to make a better system. What do all of these men have in
common beyond implementing improvements? They were all around before the
internet and computers were ever conceived.
Current day civic hackers
The civic hacker, in modern times, can actually be seen all
around us. For example authentication companies that provide two-factor
authentication solutions to protect not only the company’s information and
assets, but their customer’s personal information as well. Companies like PortalGuard
and others understand the importance providing a secure way to login and
protect information from getting into the wrong hands. Although two-factor
authentication is not the end-all-be-all answer for protecting data from the
black hat hackers of the world, it is a secure step in the right
direction.
Benjamin Franklin was a hacker, who knew?
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