Matt Cropp 🌲🌲Jul 7, 2017
My #hackerspace is starting a #hacker #BookClub, and I'd welcome suggestions to add to our to-read list. We'll be doing both fiction and non-fiction works that have connections to hacker culture, identity, history, etc.
Show threadMatt Cropp 🌲🌲Jul 7, 2017
The current list drawn from our membership:
-The Cathedral and The Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary
-Snowcrash
-Neuromancer
-A Hacker Manifesto
-Gamer Theory
-Atlas Shrugged
-My Inventions: The Autobiography of Nikola Tesla
-Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus: How Growth Became the Enemy of Prosperity
-Spook Country
-The Diamond Age
-Cryptonomicon
-Ready Player One
Show threadebel
@mattcropp a discworld novel? To balance the libertarian aspect?
Jul 7, 2017 at 6:28pmWeb
Show threadSimon 🌧Jul 7, 2017
@ebel @mattcropp yeah that's a hugely libertarian (and in the us-libertarian, not kropotkin-libertarian) bent of authors.
Show threadMatt Cropp 🌲🌲Jul 7, 2017
@simonv3 @ebel There's 2 that I recognize immediately as libertarian - what aside from Rand and The Cathedral and the Bazaar do you see leaning that way?
Show threadSimon 🌧Jul 7, 2017

@mattcropp @ebel Heh, I guess those two just popped out to me as swaying the entire conversation that way, and there's just such a general acceptance of those things being good.

I also tend to associate anything by Stephenson as pretty libertarian, but I can never tell if that's satire or not. Cryptonomicon especially so. Snowcrash not so much.

Show threadCharles 𝄢 HutchinsJul 8, 2017
@simonv3 snowcraah is so influential in people trying to build VR systems. I copied a lot of his ideas when I was building a MOO. And that book was clearly a blueprint for Second Life. The part that everyone forgets, though, that they chippy into their systems as a fatal flaw: Snowcrash describes a failed state which has turned to ancap-style hyper capitalism. Which ended up also being the economic model for second life and probably helped promote the idea of online spaces as unregulated, government-free zones for capitalism. I don't think it meant to advance that as a good idea, it just happened by accident, maybe.
Show threadSimon 🌧Jul 9, 2017
@celesteh yeah! I think that's how I suspect a lot of Stephenson's work is written but also perceived. He writes gun slinging libertarian cow boys and I think that's how a lot of hacker culture sees itself - especially the ones you encounter on HN - and I can't quite tell if it's satire or not. Seveneves leads me to believe it might be, but it's still very technocratic meritocratic. And I wonder about the consequences of that.
Show threadMatt Cropp 🌲🌲Jul 7, 2017
@ebel For those who've never read #discworld, what would be a good starting book?
Show threadebelJul 7, 2017
@mattcropp well I've loved the witches series. But the hacker-y aspect is slightly hidden. Lots of loves for the freaks of the world. "headology" is basically social engineering. The stories have lots of distrust of authority, and a points out you have social responsibility.
Show threadebelJul 7, 2017
@mattcropp there are several "series" in #discworld here's a chart https://www.lspace.org/books/reading-order-guides/the-discworld-reading-order-guide-20.jpg