hackr

 Whilst there may be no ’objective’ web-two-point-zero-ness to be found outside the hype of the media’s use of the term Web 2.0, I’m interested in acknowledging the connection I see between a political designation of conventional conceptions of executive education (see previous posts on the topic) and the user-generated-content alluded to in the use of ‘web 2.0′ descriptor. But for me, this new political designation affords more than an acknowledgement of content being user generated: this seems a democratic given. Web 2.0 doesn’t seem to go far enough.

Framed in the newly politicized vocabulary of executive education there is something of the hacker – or ‘hackr’ in Web 2.0 parlance – implicit in this politically educated executive citizenry; and by hackr I don’t mean a poor golf player or unskilled amateur. The hackr I’m referring to is a meddler who tries to discover sensitive information by poking around. An example of sensitive information I talk about in this blog is the (politically) non-neutral nature of normative executive education practices. Interestingly, one of the principles of the ‘hackr ethic’ is the belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible. I see the politically educated executive (see previous post) as just such a hackr; someone who is willing to hack into, to meddle with, politically ’sensitive’ information; to poke around and to share access to this information. And by ‘meddle’ I  mean metaphorically ’hopping over fences’ and challenging the legitimacy of enshrined values, knowledge and boundaries. This is the activism, radicalism and insurgency I’ve referred to before. The hackr I’m referring to would, for instance, be willing, as an executive actant undertaking a political education, to acknowledge and question the dominant neoliberal paradigm (see Chomsky’s 1999 ‘Profit over People’) inside of which normative executive education takes place. And if not that lofty goal, to at least examine political power differentials within the organisations in which they operate and relate these the power differentials present in the processes of their personal and professional development.