Metanet Issue 1 [unfinished]

Input? :)

1. What is Metanet?
Part pamphlet, part DIY-zine, part theoretical toxic dump of a generation, Metanet is a celebration of the grassrootesque culture that had its seed planted the first time somebody realised that language isn’t static. Metanet is an attempt to funnel the interactive chaos that is the Internet. It’s a basket of ideas – critical and creative – stemming from a collective mind. Metanet takes no responsibility for anything. Metanet takes no credit for anything. You are welcome to join in, you are welcome to copy, you are welcome to remix.

2. The hacker ethos
The main driving force behind Metanet is the the hacker ethos. This first issue will therefore spend some time trying to explain what hacking is. Hacking is not just about computers. Hacking is not about breaking the law. Hacking is not about destroying something. — Hacking is the act of looking at a problem and wanting to find a solution. Hacking is navigating past the simulation and interacting with the wires that control it. Hacking is rebuilding. Hacking is recoding. You can hack any language, be it binary, English, body. You can hack any function: a machine, a legal procedure, the creation of stardom through the media. You can hack your spatial surroundings – climb houses, pick locks, find new ways of navigating the city. Everything is hackable. Hacking is to not accept spoon-fed truths. Hacking is asking yourself: is there something more behind this I’m not seeing? Is there something here I can change to make things better? Is there something I’m not being told? Break out of the mold. Forget about thinking outside of the box – mod the box into a sphere instead. Hacking is accepting that nothing is ever perfect, and that everything can be improved in some way. It’s a way of looking at the world and the things around us. It’s saying no to the idea that some things just are the way they are. A hacker doesn’t see a courthouse; a hacker sees a structure built on principles of architecture, containing people who are acting a certain way based on the codes and languages dictacting the social and societal rules inside that structure. The public’s image of a hacker is that of the kid with a laptop who hooks herself up to the courthouse network to tinker with case files. But the fact is that the person using the courthouse building as a way to access hard-to-reach places in order to explore the city is just as much of a hacker. To the urban explorer the building is a solution to a spatial problem first, and a judicial institution second. Thus a hacker needs not only recode the world around her, but also recode her view of the world. A hacker needs to disconnect the societal connotations of things and see them for the function they provide to solve any given problem. This applies to hacking computers just as much as changing social norms, picking locks, creating art and (re)thinking. Everything is hackable.

3. Why hacking is for everyone

4. What Metanet aims to do
This publication should not be seen as an attempt to create or spread an ideology. Nor should it be treated as a complete package or framework of hacking or anything like that. Metanet will provide tidbits, tips and summaries of things we feel relate to hacking in one way or another. We will not explain everything. You will need to look up things on your own. We will possibly confuse you at times. We will ask you to connect the dots. There will be no truths handed out here – just knowledge, information and opinions.
We aim at releasing small but frequent issues instead of large and infrequent ones. We will try to have an even mix of practical and theoretical content. Our audience is anyone who can understand what we write, and some of those who can’t.

5. What now?

[unfinished, please comment, edit, add]