So, here I am, up far later than planned. If you catch any errors/omissions, please note them in the comments and I'll correct them asap.

Last night I had I had great fun talking about hacker culture with the good folks over at CINLUG, the Central INdiana Linux Users' Group about hacker culture. The session was not recorded, but below are links to the works I referenced, followed by my presentation notes (which are more like a rough outline and may or may not be useful to anyone else).

References:

These are in no particular order

In the past couple of weeks, I've become increasingly aware of how much conflict younger open source projects I'm involved in have compared to more mature projects and projects run by folks with an extreme number of years in open source.

Then I had to explain to my housemate who Donald Knuth is...
...and tell a fellow Drupalista what the Jargon File is...
...and define "grok" for a colleague from the XMPP community...
...and stifle a laugh while my 7-year-old tried to describe the wumpus to someone who should know better...
...after which I read Eric Raymond's recent post on the social utility of hacker humor.

Then I grokked.

In the projects that have been around for a dozen or more years, or those run by hackers who have been, there is a common culture and identity shared by all: we're hackers. Whatever else we are -- country bumpkins, urbanites, gay, straight, bi, male, female, transgender, a particular religion or nationality, old or young, single or married, parent or not, rich or poor -- we are hackers, and all we need to know to work together is that we share that cultural bond of hackerdom.

I rarely write about feminism.  When I have, it has to point out the foolishness of pushing non-tech women into technology in the name of gender equality, and trying to obscure the ability gap by pressuring competent women to spend too much of their time with the incompetent ones.

This time I'm writing about a brilliant article I came across on twitter (thanks @crell).

A 7yo boy was kidnapped from someplace in Oregon.  It's received the kind of coverage parents can only get when their missing child is cute enough to imply profitability to network news directors.  During a one-year period studied by the DOJ (stat via missingkids.org), an average of 2,185 children were reported missing each day.  Paring the news coverage down to the occassional poster child makes the subject more manageable, but it also gives the illusion that kidnapping is a rare occurrence.

According to the latest ad for Kings Island amusement park, riding their roller coaster makes you a "ride warrior".  I guess we can add it to the list with "road warrior" and "war on poverty".  It's standard identity advertising -- that is, making people want something because they want to think of themselves as the kind of person who wants that thing.  It's ridiculous, and it sells.  There's a reason that the "warrior" image can sell Americans on just about anything these days, and it's a symptom of a real problem with some pretty terrifying results.