Netochka Nezvanova | Hacker News Reader

Netochka Nezvanova

usemod.com

17 pointszby7 comments

Why I post that now? In some ways this story resembles, even if in other ways it is the opposite of, what I read here about why.

It seems 'hacker' must be redefined.

Until now it was about programmers and coders -- technical people with focused mind living inside a digital world.

Now more open minded (not just digital thinking) and more free people (with the spirit of an artist) like _why, NN, Hasan Elahi -- are taking over the web.

The next web superstars won't be NASA crackers, Facebook founders, rockstar programmers, alpha geeks. We will sink back to build infrastructures on which new breed heroes will bring and open the web forward.

I was just thinking of Netochka, yesterday, as everyone was talking about how the internet persona and alias _why was an artwork in itself. Despite all of _why's accomplishments and contributions, which are more and greater than Netochka, Netochka will go down as a much greater artist and phenomenom.

Netochka was not only more dramatic, but thematic. As the original article says, she helped reinforced the cyberspace mythology her audience was interested in. _why reinforced hacker mythology mind you, but cyberspace culture is much bigger.

Yeah, you're right, I shouldn't have said that _why contributed more, just that _why's contributions reached wider audiences, at least in a direct way.

It's nice to see that there are some art hackers, or informed members, on hacker news, though!

I recommend you swing by MeatballWiki (http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl). Nine and a half years ongoing, that's where I express my artistic side, including the article linked above coincidentally.

Here I'm mostly representing my day job.

"The epoch of the generalist has arrived -- again. Any fool can program and most do. Software engineers are emotionally inept. In today's unstable + dynamic environment they do not stand a chance." - Netochka Nezvanova

http://dir.salon.com/story/tech/feature/2002/03/01/netochka/...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com