At a tech-business event where I was talking with people about the dynamics of creative groups, a fellow offered that we are becoming a hacker culture, meaning that young people are prone to alter or repurpose software and devices to their liking, to evade DRM and copy protection and generally make things work the way they like.
He’s right– but this isn’t new at all. Sociologist Claude Levi-Strauss spoke about the concept of bricolage, which is usually translated as tinkering or using what’s available to create a new thing. Hacking, in other words. Levi-Strauss posed this as a basic process in the creation of culture.
From Working Through
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