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Is the Seeking of Lost Skills/Arts a Hacking Analog?
bigattichouse asks: "Having just finished my first batch of home-brew beer, I've been thinking about my attraction to 'lost arts', and collecting books on 'how to do stuff'. Some I try, some I just read: metalsmithing, sewing, baking bread, making soap, knot tying, brewing beer, woodcarving, yogurt and cheese.. there are so many skills 'lost' in the modern 'american' lifestyle... but I find my fellows tend to have books on these subjects lying around, too. Is this common in geekdom? Is this an expression of 'hacking' outside of machinery/engineering?"
We are on watch lists with the FBI because of that also. They consider us a "paramilitary" training group even though the tactics we teach are not necessarily useful against modern weapons. It is a lot of fun though!
Stephan Von Ardenwald
Pirateship Beltis
Yes I would consider that part of the hacking life style . Trying to understand everything around you , maybe even doing it your self is part of the "life style" . Most hackers I know (traditional use) are very keen with not only computers and electronics , but chemistry (read explosives) , metalworking , and a few are interested in nature (they even go out while the "day star" is still outside). The hacking life style is really one about knowledge and understanding so any activity/tool (reasonable priced of course) you can expect a hacker to have at least a passing interest in (and some times more so than one) . That being said , is this worthy of a slashdot article?
Yes, I think you're on to something there. Not only do I brew beer, but we also sell homebrew supplies in my hardware store. My informal observations of the customers who shop for home brew supplies leads me to the conclusion that most hombrewers are geeks (That's a compliment!).
:-)
Getting back to my subject, I've also discovered that my passion for pinball (started at MIT in 1977) is shared with numerous folks on the net and around the world, and there is definitely a connection between the lost art of pinball (face it, pinball is dying, especially electromechanical machines) and geeks. I own an old Faces EM pinball machine myself which I've been restoring to it's former glory, in between brewing batches of homebrew and playing Asheron's Call.
"We make our world significant by the courage of our questions and by the depth of our answers." Carl Sagan
Am I this way? Of course. I love blending the old and the new, the modern with the retro. Hell, my ideal computer case design would be something that would look like it belongs in a victorian parlor. Geeks love the anachronism, because if something from the past Just Works, why not use it?
Marxism is the opiate of dumbasses
grow food, etc
That's interesting. This is the first year that I've found the time to grow vegetables. I've got corn, pumpkins, and the one "conformist" crop that you must have where I live: tomatoes.
I never thought of this small garden as a "geek" endevour, but I must admint, because this is my first attempt to grow more than just "decorative" corn, I went online and found out all kinds of stuff about it.
A big part of the appeal for me in gardening is not to waste land, and not to get ripped off by people. The mentality that leads me to go the extra mile and grow pumpkins so I don't have to pay some ridiculous price in the Fall is a kin to the mentality that makes people edit arcane config files in Linux so they don't have to pay Bill Gates. Also, I think growing food on your land is somehow quintessentially American... OK, that's less of a geek thing, and more of a pride thing. Remember when pennies had the wheat on them, and America took pride in agriculture? OK... too much semiotics... at any rate, I've come to appreciate farmers. Don't let people tell you farmers are stupid. If they do, ask them about crop rotation and soil pH... put them in their place.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I spent some ten years working as a blacksmith, and believe me, it's a lot more fun making those swords than fighting with them.
And yes, a blacksmith can, too, be a geek. Just check out some of the literature and mailing lists on archaeometallurgy. There are much too many to list here, but Google will find some of them.
In a few hundred years, few books from this century or the last will exist. Since about 1850, when paper made from wood-pulp was first produced, many books have simply disintegrated as a result of the acid content. I have a number of books from as recently as 1987 which are already disintegrating.
That is what's going to make this a Dark Age.