Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking

particularly fond of the next example contained in the manual (usually shortened to “man page”) for Mutt, a popular email client among geeks. Man pages provide documentation and are included with almost all Unix systems. They typically follow a strict standard for conveying information about the program by designating a set of common categories under which programmers provide detailed information about the software, such as the name, synopsis, description, options, files, examples, and authors. One important category is bugs, where authors list the problems and glitches with the software. (Software can have a number of bugs and glitches yet still work. The bug category gives you a sense of what these glitches are and when they will emerge.) The Mutt man page exploits the fact that the word mutt can mean a mongrel dog. Notice the category of bugs:
    NAME
    mutt—The Mutt Mail User Agent
    SYNOPSIS
    mutt [-nRyzZ] [-e cmd] [-F file] [-m type] [-f file] [ … ]
    DESCRIPTION
    Mutt is a small but very powerful text based program for reading electronic mail under Unix operating systems, including support color terminals, MIME, and a threaded sorting mode.
    OPTIONS
    —A alias
    An expanded version of the given alias is passed to stdout.
    —a file
    Attach a file to your message using MIME. [ … ]
    BUGS
    None. Mutts have fleas, not bugs.
    FLEAS
    Suspend/resume while editing a file with an external editor does not work under SunOS 4.x if you use the curses lib in /usr/5lib. It does work with the S-Lang library, however.
    Resizing the screen while using an external pager causes Mutt to go haywire on some systems. [ … ]
    My last example of this subtle integration of wit in a technological artifact comes in the form of a warning message. Many software programs and related artifacts are accompanied by dramatic warnings that appear during configuration. These are intended to alert the user that its integration into some software systems may produce unanticipated, drastic, and completely undesirable results (like breaking multiple parts of your software system that took five weeks to get “just right”). Often this happens because a piece of software is still experimental and riddled with bugs. The following help message is available in the 2.6 branch of Linux kernel configuration and refers to the RAID-6 device driver, which at the time was still under development and hence buggy:
    WARNING: RAID-6 is currently highly experimental. If you use it, there is no guarantee whatsoever that it won’t destroy your data, eat your disk drives, insult your mother, or re-appoint George W. Bush
    These three examples demonstrate that hackers value subtlety and irony of presentation. Hackers discretely embed nuanced, clever and frequently nonfunctional jokes within what are otherwise completely rational, conventional statements of function. Yet hackers never use jokes to undermine the functionality or trustworthiness of the code or documentation. These technical artifacts are judged seriously by geeks. The presence of wit only works to add to the value of the rational content by reminding the user that behind these highly systematized genres, there is a discriminating and creative individual.
    Other instances of hacker wit occur in person and are less subtle. For example, at a security conference in 2001, Peiter Zatko, aka “Mudge,” a computer security researcher, professional, and hacker (once part of the famous hacker association L0pht Heavy Industries), arrived in a terrycloth bathrobe to present on a panel on PDAs. This bold sartorial statement distinguished him from his nonhacker colleagues, also security researchers, but scientists. It prioritized hacker over scientific identity. Mudge’s attire, however, performed a problematic public-private breach in the context of his talk, which focused on the changing use patterns of PDAs. “PDAs were designed for personal use, but are now being used more for business,” Zatko said. “There’s a security boundary that’s being crossed.” 6 Zatko’s robe embodied his argument that the shift amounted to a breached security boundary: PDAs should not be used for sensitive, private data.
    Though humor is found worldwide, instances like the ones just described are fruitful to the anthropologist because of their cultural particularity. As this playful practice usually induces laughter—a state of bodily affect that enraptures an audience—humor can potentially produce forms of collective