Today’s Distinguished Lecture at Berkeley iSchool was cancelled because the speaker, John Perry Barlow, got stuck in LA. Big bummer. The title of his talk was to be ‘Is Cyberspace still anti-sovereign?’ and I have to admit that I was going to go mostly for a view of the personality. So I was sad the lecture didn’t happen.

But people still came, since they didn’t cancel until the last minute. And it was an interesting group. I think Barlow brings the ‘anarchists’ and the ‘hackers’ out of the woodword - they glomb on to his rhetoric about freedom and regulation on the Internet. As we were standing around in the hallway, eating on the food that was supposed to be for the lecture reception, a guy walked up to me, dressed in a certain stereotypical way with torn clothes, patches and symbols, safety pins, jeans, a hoodie, etc… He had been sitting on the floor to the side with a friend. He raised his arms in the air and said ‘Who’s a programmer here?’ Surprised, and not ready for my ethnographic encounter, I said something non-comittal like ‘Well, I guess we all are sort of.’ I was standing with some folks much more saavy in that department than I. The guy paused for a minute and said in the same sort of way ‘Who’s a hacker?’ We looked at each other - probably because no one had ever asked us that before. I think a few thoughts went through my mind right then:

1. What’s a hacker?
2. I suppose I’m a hacker - I try in my own little way to ‘break’ technology to do what I need it to do. But that’s getting less and less unusual.
3. If I were really a hacker, would I admit it? Would I want to talk about it?

So I made some comment similar to the last. Not engaging, more surprised and confused than anything. He mentioned he runs a major ‘Whacker’ site - again, what’s that? And that he thought he’d meet a lot of like-minded folks at the lecture. He was dissapointed it wasn’t going on. Here’s a definition of ‘Whacker’ I found on answers.com:

1. A person, similar to a hacker, who enjoys exploring the details of programmable systems and how to stretch their capabilities. Whereas a hacker tends to produce great hacks, a whacker only ends up whacking the system or program in question. Whackers are often quite egotistical and eager to claim wizard status, regardless of the views of their peers.

Then he started to rail on ICANN. He actually said ‘Down with ICANN!’ And I was surprised and unready again. Of all the evil tech. institutions in the world, I have found relatively little attention to ICANN. He also mentioned that he loves Tor.

So then we left. And he left. And as I walked away, I thought, ‘Judd! You dumbass! You just missed a perfect opportunity to find out about another person’s life, another POV!’ I should have asked about ‘Whacking,’ and what he hates about ICANN, and why he likes TOR. I was curious what he does during the day, how he got into running a website, and why he likes John Perry Barlow. But I missed my chance. I hope, next time, I won’t be so dumb. I’ll be more prepared.