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Should Hackers Get Their Own Logo?
Ridgelift writes "Eric S. Raymond is proposing a new logo for Hackerdom. 'The Linux folks have their penguin and the
BSDers their demon.
Perl's got a camel, FSF
fans have their gnu and OSI's
got an open-source
logo. What we haven't had, historically, is an emblem that
represents the entire hacker community of which all these
groups are parts. This is a proposal that we adopt one - the glider pattern from the Game of Life.'"
You want a group that has been, historically, non-conformists to agree on something so singular as a logo?
Here's a cup, there's the hoover dam. You'll have better luck.
btw, I think it's more fitting that hackers do not have a logo, personally.
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
That glider is pointing downward and will eventually crawl off the bottom right corner of the screen.
The glider should be going up, to symbolize progress.
Your design to a real part online: Big Blue Saw
This seems kind of ridiculous and pointless. Sure, it's an interesting idea, but it seems like a kind of needless branding of an identity/concept. Plus, you'll see all the least qualified latching onto it first, to prove that they're so plugged in to the culture.
And then in three months, it'll show up on peoples' resumes. And business cards. And we'll all die a little bit.
Speaking of which, time to update my resume, this may be the key to getting my hyper-1337 job.
I am not Herbert.
Look, there are 8 gliders like this - 4 directions, and 2 states, if I remember right.
Why on earth did he pick one that goes DOWN?
Why not pick one that goes up and right?
Crackers should have one that goes DOWN.
Education is the silver bullet.
Call me old school, (okay, a lot of you will call much nastier things than that) but I just don't like the idea of another logo. Notice that on Raymond's little proposal page there almost as much space devoted to who should *not* use that logo than to what the logo is actually supposed to represent. This starts to make me feel that the purpose is to draw lines on the ground and say "you can come in but you "others" have to stay out".
Cheers, Dcobbler.
the need for a logo is obvious. After all, /. was forced to use the linux logo for this.
You've never heard of the Game of Life? You're right then, a Hacker Emblem doesn't apply to you.
if a logo "needs colour" it wasn't designed well. If you're making a logo for something, first design it in b&w, make sure it look good, then add your colour. That way, the logo will still be effective when photocopied, faxed, or viewed by those with less than perfect colour perception.
You want a group that has been, historically, non-conformists to agree on something so singular as a logo?
Sure. Even anarchists have a logo, for god's sake!
Hackers are a rich subculture, and it's been that way for decades. Hackers share common life views, activities, and experiences that are different than the mainstream. So they're distinctive and weird, not unlike peace-activists, republicans, christians, motorcyclists, masons, homosexuals, etc. They've all got their logos that some wear with pride and others choose not to. But if you do choose to fly the flag, at least there's a community understanding of what it means.
One problem I see with a logo though, is that hackers tend to hate posers (since hacking is more about competence than simply attitude). And it's easier to pose with a logo.
However, this argument neatly sums up why you can't apply a logo to all of hackerdom, I think.
The ultimate argument against the usefulness of such a logo is that you aren't a hacker because you get recognition, you're a hacker because you enjoy hacking. If you're doing it for some other goal, you are a hacker in the sense of one who hacks, but not a hacker in the sense of one who would be most aptly described by 'hacker'.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Perhaps you mean this :^)
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It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
- E. Debs
This rule can be broken and has in fact been broken many times in the past. Before you brake it, you need to know your audience and the channels that you reach them.
Example: Google. When you photocopy it, what you get is just the word in a not-very-exciting font (besides colors, the 3D effect and the shadows can vanish too). But since the Google logo will be seen almost exclusively through color monitors, that's no problem.
Bascially, that's the old way of designing logos, like Paul Rand did it. This school of logo creation also means that a logo can have no direction (think arrows), because it would look strange when you print it on both sides of a truck and it inevitably points backwards on one side.
Anyway, to close my post: There might be rules for logos, but these rules are moving. And Logos that work only in color might be ok today.
I love the "dyslexics of the world: untie!" joke, but I must ruin your variation by pointing out that the flyer object represented in the proposed hacker logo has the same "flying" (moving) qualities regardless of symmetry (vertical and horizontal flips, and/or rotations in any direction by 90 degree increments yields a virtual object with the same behaviour). So it wouldn't really be dyslexic at all to have the little arrow formed by your flyer point to the lower-left, as opposed to the arbitrary orientation in the proposed logo.
:)
Which makes me wonder why ESS picked that particular direction/orientation. Surely the choice was not politically motivated, since the arrow points to the right (lower-right, yes, but definitely not left as one might expect). Then again, you might say the vertical element sort of leans left, so that would be appropriate.
Seriously, I'm still not sure about the whole logo idea. On one hand, I really don't care -- those that like it should feel free to use it and, in time, it may garner some respect. If not, those who embraced it will be ridiculed for an appropriate length of time and intensity. On the other hand, it sucks because, well, because it's a logo. And a contrived one, specifically chosen to try to be cool, which is, of course, as un-cool as you can get. If a logo for the hacker community just sort of happened accidentally, as the result of some odd, unexpected, unifying event or meme, it might stick. But I think a contrived logo, even with a reference as cool as John Conway built in, is unlikely to catch on.
But, on the bright side, R'ing TFA led me to this funny hacker FAQ that I hadn't seen before. Very accurate, if a bit too condescending. Regardless, my boss is getting a copy of this right now -- not that he really needs is, but he'll laugh for sure and maybe learn a little.
everything in moderation
Actually, to be a true hacker, one would make it as efficient as possible. In this case, you'd make it a 3x3 image and enlarge it with the image tag in the web page. For example this page
Think of how the term "hacker" was corrupted in the first place.
What makes you think the same won't happen with the logo. I can just see the same steps happening:
1. A couple of script kiddies, who don't even understand what those downloaded rootkits do, start placing the logo on defaced websites and such. Or placing it all over some warez sites, in between porn popups and l33t text.
2. A few retarded and clueless journalists clamp on the "hacking is evil, and this is the logo of these evil people" idea. You know, writing an article about a _real_ hacker won't rake in the readers. It's just a guy working long shifts to make some complicated program. Not many people want to read about that. Whereas doom and gloom journalism about these evil 'hackers', who'll bring our cyber-civilization to its knees, those sell.
3. Your average PHB clamps onto the journalists' definition. It's easier him to understand stuff like "wow, these guys are motivated by evil goals" than "whoa, someone actually likes computers and spends his/her free time learning and experimenting".
So anyway, think about it this way. Would you tell a random client nowadays that you're a hacker, or that you sympathize with hackers? Want to be that they'll instantly understand "cyber-terrorist" by that? You can try to educate them all you want, they'll just fall back to the definition that the media feeds them.
Now take the logo. Do you have any doubt that in a couple of years wearing that logo on a t-shirt will have the same effect? And what do you think will happen after the company loses a few contracts because the client saw you wearing that evil symbol? I can just see it banned at work.
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