To those who say that the youth today are presumptious milksops, I cite www.theseventeenmagazineproject.com, a critique of Seventeen Magazine by a 17 year-old who is living according to it’s advice. The results are both obvious and suprising, and her ongoing analysis is perceptive and entertaining by turn.
It’s always a pleasure to see dry wit used to deliver insight, but getting it from a teenager who is both leveraging it as a platform (you’d better believe her big-media interviews are going on her resume) and educating her peers is pure gold. After all, who doesn’t want to know what a seventeen year old thinks of seventeen magazine – especially when trying to live by its edicts?
It’s a damn clever hack that benefits everybody – even Seventeen Magazine, for whom editorial accountabilty to their ostensible readers is sorely lacking.
You know the types: The one who talks wayyyy too loudly on private calls, completely disrupting everyone around him. Or the self-important person whose incoming text messages are always far more important than actually giving you his undivided attention for five minutes. Yeah, those types.
If you work w/ one of those, maybe it’s time for the ultimate work-around: A cell phone jammer. Churches, temples, theaters, concert halls and museums use them to ensure that their cultural norms are preserved and so self-possessed people need to exit the locale to talk loudly or check the scores from their favorite team.
Extreme? Maybe. But sometimes that’s what’s called for.
Many of us remember when we were collectively scratching our heads around who should be able to link to whom about what – at least until Google turned it into the best possible way to monetize our online social and financial capital. But some companies are still fighting the good fight, shooting at the only target around: their feet.
Case in point; The Edinburgh Fringe Festival website. They insist that reading their site constitutes a binding contract (not true in any country I know of) and that opening up their platform to others to share, remix, and distribute would cost them significant revenue. Nevermind that most other festivals go out of their way to do just that.
There are plenty of other examples; Vodafone, Ticketmaster, Easyjet – they all prevent deep-linking. That is, the ability for others to link to webpages that are NOT the front page is forbidden.
That means that all their carefully-curated content cannot be shared. Information about their sales, their special offers, their services – all private. Not a very smart way to run a company, is it? This is 2010, and yet the hacks most of us thought had gone mainstream in 1997 still prevail in places – which is exactly why people like us need to boostrap our businesses: they aren’t going to do it themselves.
In Dubai, hundreds of thousands of laborers from all over the world are building luxury they will never experience. Some of those from India are hacking that economic divide — through cricket.
SmartLife realized that the one bond that tied both blue-collar Indian laborers, with few skills beyond what they could do with their hands, and white-collar Indian professionals, was their shared love of cricket. So SmartLife not only organized regular matches with both Indian economic classes, but they also helped establish mentoring programs where professionals “adopt” a laborer to assist in his training and development, and prizes from the cricket matches include free computer courses. (CNN Video)
Hacking Lesson: Often the best hacks involve making connections between people with seemingly different goals or agendas, and helping them see that helping each other is actually enlightened self interest. Are you a connector? Is that your hack?
Stories like this always make me sit back and wonder if I’m not screwing up the world by encouraging everyone to go out and hack stuff. After all, extensive regulation of things like nuclear reactors is a good thing, right?
And yet, when I read the details, this guy isn’t trying to make bombs, or even an existing style of reactor. He’s trying to make a fusion reactor based on the recently-unfunded work of Dr. Bussard, who showed promising signs of discovering a means of completely safe energy generation.
It’s far out, wierd, world-changing science. It’s not blowing up your backyard at all – despite what the media reporters might make of it. And it’s yet another example of useful, insightful information being inflated into sensationalist baloney.
So instead of hearing “some enterprising soul is trying to advance a promising long shot” we hear “terrorists next door.” It’s part of the reason people really DO need to embrace hacking.
Wanna see the power of the masses en mass? Get your suited-up butt to Comic-Con next year! (Cosplay is definitely part of the deal.)
collider.com
Comic-Con is not a hackfest, per se. Attendees don’t get to re-write scripts or change scenes or fire actors or directors they don’t like. But, to reach box office or gaming success, most every fantasy/comic/graphic novel/sci-fi-based effort must pass muster with with their fan base. Well over 100,000 fans show up each year probing panelists and directors. They want to know how true those in charge are being to the history, mythology, costuming, and ethos of their characters and plot-lines.
Hacking Lesson: Bottom-up power is real. In recent years, every movie that wowed Comic-Con-ers won instant word-of-mouth raves eventually went on to become blockbusters at the box office. Most every movie that failed to wow them, well, let’s say sales could be heard in cartoon-balooned “Ssssplattt!”s and “Thudddd!”s. The power of the masses to give support or take it away is very real.
Comedy Central is donating $1 to Colbert’s Gulf of America Fund (up to $50k) every time someone retweets this It’s a freaking fantastic example of how new media is chewing up old business models for breakfast.
Honestly, it’s a pretty obvious hack – just like when Colbert asked “the internet” to mess with Wikipedia’s entry on elephants. He has a big audience, and he’s able to use it. Maybe not the same way as certain other Twitterlebrities, but still – it’s clever. And after he proved his point on Wikipedia, he turned around and used it for good – by getting Comedy Central to pony up for some amazingly good branding.
In other words, he illustrated to them that if they donated a load of cash for his Gulf of America Fund they’d be associated with doing good in the mind of their (potential and existing) viewers, would reach a much larger (and better targeted) audience than if they’d just bought a billboard ad, and (I expect) got a great tax write-off to boot.
That’s a good hack. Why aren’t more folks doing this?
Some were awesome, (just don’t go to meetings); some were funny yet useful (whack a screwdriver against a magnet a few dozen times and you now have a magnetized screwdriver); some were commonsensical (buy a box of small LED flashlights and place one behind anything you routinely have to peer behind — the fridge, TV, inside a computer rack).
But one made me go “Uhhhh, I dunno.” Suggested hack: Buy a starter pistol, the kind they use in track races, and store it in your CHECKED luggage when you travel. Your luggage will ALWAYS arrive where it’s supposed to because luggage with guns in them have to be stored and managed with much more attention to detail than all other luggage. Not all procedural workarounds are good ideas!
Hacking is about solving problems, despite government or big industry’s best efforts to prevent it in the name of the status quo or market share. As in any environment, the more you attempt to suppress a balanced system the more the system will disequilibriate itself to counter you – it’s the same thing that happened with BitTorrent and music downloads, and now (increasingly) with TV and streaming.
Would somebody please tell business to wake up and start working with its consumers to give them what they want?
This article is a good one, and not just because it’s well considered. It walks through why we should be worried about running out of food in developed nations.
Or, more importantly, why we may run out of water. And yet, for every challenge mentioned in the piece I could think of a handful of struggling entrepreneurs who were working on a solution. Some are wacky, some imminently impractical, but some have a very real shot at changing the world for the better.
That’s a big part of what we hope Hacking Work will encourage people to do – innovate us all into a better place. It’s readily apparent that an individual can react more flexibly, act more courageously, and leverage their resources more effectively than a big company. At the same time, that same individual can benefit more directly from their contributions.
We may be facing a perfect storm of food and water shortages, but with a little luck and hard work, a perfect storm of innovation will be there to counter it.
Yet another reason our children will be laughing at us. Srsly, if you wanted to blow up a plane, you can. As much as it’s scarier to think about dying in a plane wreck than in an car accident (despite statistically being hugely much more likely to suffer the latter) it’s not USEFUL to do so.
I’d love to hack the airport security system by implementing a reverse-pricing scheme on the airlines. If I could pay them based on their performance rather than on their monopoly I feel like I’d save a bundle and enjoy flying a lot more.
For optimum performance and safety, please read these instructions carefully. Do not operate heavy machinery or moving vehicles while viewing information on this site. Do not remove this disclaimer under penalty of law. Not a toy: for some, adult supervision may be required. All content in both the book, Hacking Work, and on this site, www.hackingwork.com…(HW)…is for educational purposes only. The views we express and information we share are to be used solely to incite deep-thinking and engaging conversation. We do not condone any actions that are illegal, immoral or against any company’s or individual’s values. We are merely passing along information we have gathered from others for educational purposes. The posting of any information on this site and any labels attributed to it, such as SafeZone Hack or others, are purely for educational and entertainment purposes only. All information relating to results that others have experienced are for educational purposes only: your mileage may vary (YMMV). Should anyone wish to actually use this information at work or elsewhere, they do so at their own risk, and we advise them to first seek counsel from their company’s legal department, their own lawyer, their closest friend and, if available, their local shaman. The names of the innocent and not-so-much have been abbreviated or changed to protect their identity. This is part of our bond with everyone who visits this site. Our goals are to: 1. Provide a “town square” — an open forum to discuss all dimensions, positive and negative, of hacking work. 2. To help those who are interested in building their own toolkits to hack their work — in a legally-appropriate way. 3. Provide a new lens for examining work and workplaces — discussing, discovering, and possibly inventing how work will change and is changing. 4. To delight, provoke Aha’s, and have fun while educating and informing. We do our best to vet all information that comes to us, but our only fact-checkers are three hamsters in the back room…and they’re kind of busy on their wheels…so we make no guarantees as to the accuracy of information that is passed along to us or that we pass along to you. Anyone sending us information about hacks or related activities agrees that they take sole responsibility for its content and subsequent legal issues. No representation or warranty, express or implied, with respect to the completeness, accuracy, fitness for a particular purpose, or utility of these materials or any information or opinion contained herein. No animals, interns or book agents were harmed in the making of this site. Information and advice: void where prohibited. Batteries are not included. Everyone involved in the creation of this site swore they were over the age of 18. Warning: Information on this site may be habit-forming. Freshest if eaten within days of posting. Subject to change without notice. If rashes, itching or swelling persist, see your doctor. Use protective headgear and clothing as needed. Have a happy, safe and wonderful life; be kind to others; do a good deed each day; wash behind your ears; follow your bliss…please. Of course, in all matters relating to this site, the book Hacking Work, and life in general, the final choice and responsibility for what to do and how to do it is yours. The rules put forth by your employer may trump whatever you read on this site or in our book. Despite the whimsical tone of this disclaimer, you are still responsible for your own actions and we are not recommending that you take any actions that would put your or other’s jobs, livelihoods, or health and safety in jeopardy.
OK, we’re gonna use one trash-talk about one thing to make a point about something else…Let us know if it works.
In this YouTube clip, filmmaker David Lynch trashes the experience of watching a movie on your phone. No matter how good phones become, even those that start w/ “i,” we agree. People; popcorn; surroundsound; the images enveloping every part of you; experiencing the created world as the filmmaker envisioned it — that’s what we call watching a movie!
We’ll let David Lynch send you a wake-up call, in his own eloquent way, about experiencing a movie. We’d like to draw your attention to the fact that using the best tools for the best experience is always critical — whether it’s for entertainment or work. When your company produces crap project management tools, why subject yourself to that? Why not use awesome tools produced in the open-source marketplace. When your company tries to control your experience of how you build teams or how you communicate or how you perform evaluations or how you report your results with less-than-awesome (AKA: crappy) tools…why subject yourself to that?
Using the best tools for the job…(“best” as defined by “helping you do YOUR best”)…is supercritical. As Mr. Lynch might say IF he were an organizational design expert, “You’ll be cheated…It’s such a sadness…Stop using the company’s fucking tools…Get real!”
One of our favorite teaching tools is Charles and Ray Eames’s film The Power of Ten. It takes the complexities of math and not only explains them simply and powerfully, but does so in a way that we can see the amazing patterns of life that were previously hidden. We all need to learn and understand patterns that lie beneath the surface of our challenges, and The Power of Ten is an excellent place to start.
TEDster Rory Sutherland: “What [we need] is a class of people who have immense amounts of power, but no money at all.” That’s most hackers! Humorous pitch for all benevolent hackers to take over the world. It’s behavioral economics, folks: “Very small changes can have disproportionally huge effects, and vast areas of activity — [e.g.] enormous mergers — can accomplish absolutely bugger-all.” “>
Do you have a child who is in Grade 4 or 5 or higher? Here’s what they don’t tell you they’re up to in Computer Lab. This student shows everyone how to get into any site that’s blocked by your children’s school IT wizard. Poof. No more blocking!
I am sitting in a hotel room in Parma, Italy. CNN is on in the background, talking about Finland legislating mandatory Internet access for all its citizens. 1 Mb broadband Net access is a citizen’s RIGHT! Access to 21st century tools is now becoming as critical to one’s health and welfare as running water and electricity, sez friend of HW, social media consultant Deanna Zandt, during the CNN interview. Net access is becoming critical to all of us in the industrialized world. Which leads right into all that Josh and I are writing about in Hacking Work…
One of the key practices that single-handedly can build or destroy an organization and its people: Access to the best and right tools to do the job, to understand the job, the goals, the strategy and others and to communicate to others. Are user-centered tools (the user being the worker) a most basic and fundamental right of every corporate citizen?
With the right tools anybody can do anything and everything. Without the right tools, we are all hampered, diminished, and our ability to succeed is greatly reduced. Without the right tools, all work is harder and little of it is smarter. With the right tools, anything is possible. What do you think? Are the right tools to do one’s best a right?
A white hat hacker is the hero, a good guy. In purely tech-terms, these are ethical hackers who penetrate IT systems in order to better protect them. In workplace-terms, a white hat hacker is one who works around systems, tools, procedures and barriers so that the individual and his/her team can do great work, and so that the company and customers benefit also. White hat hackers are the ultimate win/win/win good guys. They save business from itself, one bad act at a time.
