Hackers: Clarification Part 2.

Refresher: Given this some more thought, pondered on the “why don’t I like the hacker connotation being taken negatively” and “is it the hoodie thing, or something greater”

So part one we had our builder, teacher, nurse and lawyer with us on the street…this time lets step it up a notch and go with the following:

Walking down the street this time I have the following colleagues with me, one each from Glasgow, Holeta, Osaka, Bangalore, Perth and Teotihuacan. We make an interesting sight given we’re all talking and working on laptops as we walk, several of us sprout antenna out of our backpacks, two of the team have external drives whirring away in our pockets and all of us are dressed in the typical garb of our country…albeit with the mandatory BSides shirt on.

This time, on the sideline we have mainstream society, armed with Google, lets see what society en-mass thinks of my friends.

Google searches “All xxx people….” With variables based on some criteria I came up with at 2am produces the top ranking of the following:

• All white people look the same
• All black people are good athletes
• All Asian people are good at math
• All Indian people work all the time
• All Australians enjoy beer
• All Mexican people speak Spanish

AND lets not forget the geek in the middle who started this whole thing off…

• All hackers are bad/criminals

So, now we know where mainstream society stands, what do we do about it?

How Do we change perception, I don’t have a good answer, I DO know that internally we have to do a better job of how we portray ourselves. When the marketing department wants to show the bad guy in a hoodie with gloves please help educate them, when you find it on-line please call it out…loudly! When our own folks stereotype us, call them out…or at least point me at them…I have no problem being the arse in the room and calling them out! We are better than this, we try to do the right things for everyone, so why do we let ourselves be portrayed in a negative light?

I ALSO know that my friends and colleagues are people I rely upon, trust and basically know, love and care for first AND foremost irrespective of ANY label that society gives them. Something we all need to think about and understand.

The very people you called “hacker” are probably the VERY same people who’ve just come out of client meetings where they’ve been battling against a senile corporate America that cares more for profit than it does for people.

NOTE: Google gave me some other answers first try, but I’m not going to get in the middle of a bigoted racist fight, so for now we’ll go with the more positive aspects as opposed to calling the entire planet racist, untrustworthy, smelly, lazy, drunk and basically useless…

Clarification (part2) over, hope it helps.