"The future is here. It's just not evenly distributed yet." I recently came across that quote from science-fiction writer William Gibson, and I've been repeating it ever since.
So often, signs of the future are all around us, but it isn't until much later that most of the world realizes their significance. Meanwhile, the innovators who are busy inventing that future live in a world of their own. They see and act on premises not yet apparent to others. In the computer industry, these are the folks that are affectionately called "the alpha geeks," the hackers who have such mastery of their tools that they "roll their own" when existing products don't give them what they need.
The alpha geeks are often a few years ahead of their time. They see the potential in existing technology, and push the envelope to get a little (or a lot) more out of it than its original creators intended. They are comfortable with new tools, and good at combining them to get unexpected results.
Some of these geeks in any culture are pros - they get paid for their geekery. Most are amatuers, hackers in the operating system that dominates that domain. Take a look at this from The Hacker Manifesto (1986):
This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
There is also a reference to the definition of a hacker. I like this one:
One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations.
Those who have chosen the red pill already see the absurdity of many of our hierarchies and structures. They exist in all systems, not just in the computer or online world.
When I imagine what an extrapolated view of the future might look like, with adherents & geeks & hacks all moving along - I think of these images:
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