Life Hacking

Jumping in and getting your hands dirty. Editing .ini's, operating from the command line, this is where it starts. Before long you're nosing around in someone else's system, finding their security holes and alerting them. Or just leaving your mark and letting them figure out how you did it. I call it diving, but most call it hacking. Or they used to.

Before the net was around, hackers had to hack something. So they hacked buildings. It's ancient history by now, but apparently it started at MIT. The twinkies wanted to know their world, so they crawled the tunnels, climbed the roofs, and saw. And they called it hacking. They left their marks, most often on top of the great dome. They showed the world that they knew the campus, and they were smarter than the security, and they were ingenious. Most of their hacks could also be called installation art. In unusual places.

Maybe you've realized that the physical world is an ugly place, an impersonal place, a corporate place. In cyberspace, your voice is determined by the number of people who hear you, through word of mouth. Anyone can go anywhere in an instant, to find their favorite content. In the physical world, the people with the most money get to shout the loudest, because they can pay for bigger ads, bigger buildings, stronger radio signals. Hacking is even more important in the physical world, because it may be the only voice you have.

You need an idea. It needs to get people's attention, and it needs to be clever. The peds who see it need to know that you put a lot of effort into it, so they'll pay more attention to it. Anyone can ignore spray paint on concrete in an alley. When you put it somewhere hard to get to, say thirty feet in the air, they know you must care about it. Or when your hack is clever, they have to think about it. Peds don't think enough anyway, so give them something to think about. And don't use spray paint unless you've got a damn good reason. Just like in cyberspace, 3d gets a lot more attention than 2d. If you've got a message, don't just shout it out, that's too easy to forget. You've got make them think about so it stays in their mind. You've got a voice now, but people can ignore you in real space just like they can ignore you in cyberspace, if they don't care about what you're saying.

Later maybe I'll give you some practical tips on the getting the message out, instead of just telling you what to say. If you can't figure out what to say on your own, just shut up.