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?

Josh and Bill discuss how all babies were born to hack — discovering innovation and creativity by taking things apart and putting them together again. HBR blogger Rasika Welankiwar writes how we were so much smarter as babies…with built-in protections to keep us learning. Unfortunately, we all grew up and learned the “right way” to learn is to sit in neat little rows and follow an authority figure. Hacking, bad. Tsk, tsk. Follow the leader, good. Gold star!

Wal-Mart executives’ 2009 retirement plans GREW 6.6% while their millions of employees’ plans LOST 18%! This disparity is not unique. According to multiple studies, this is happening to most employees and executives. Why hack? Because risk is not distributed evenly or fairly. You are probably bearing lots of marketplace risks while your boss’s boss is cushioned from those same risks.

Bill and Josh are promoting benevolent hacking — bypassing stupid rules for the good of your company, your team and your customers.

There’s also malicious hacking. Bad people doing bad things. Unfortunately, it’s also easy for them to hack — as evidenced by Iranian-backed insurgents that just breached $billions of U.S. drone-based military operations with $29.95 worth of off the shelf software, and by the Russian cyber gang suspected of stealing tens of millions from Citibank.

Let’s be sure we use the power of hacking for good, not evil!