Good Example Of Adapting Existing Technologies Via Hacking Essay

Over the past few decades, the term hacking has gone through a radical change. Historically, the term hacker was used to refer to a person who skillfully manipulated the features of the system to change or create something new to accomplish certain goals. Early hackers were not only passionate about their craft but also patronized their religious or communal ideology. However, hackers today are considered anti-socials.
Hackers have helped subcultures in different parts of the world to establish identity by working for community purposes rather than for individual needs. The social ontology of communities such as Amish has largely been retained or preserved by hacking. In these communities, people have adapted existing technologies to suit their goals, beliefs, or lifestyles by making tremendous changes to the technology that the world commonly uses.
The Amish, for example, shun modern technology and avoid interactions with the outside world since they believe that their community could lose its stability by secular beliefs such as individualism that so dominates the outside world. However, to make life a little easy and to help their working class make just-enough progress, some amount of technology use is required, and this is where interesting hacking takes place.
Amish hackers are workers who help domesticate technology to suit their purpose. They modified farm equipment such as tractors, plows, and sprayers to make sure that they get pulled by horses. The logic behind this is that self-propelling engines would lead to the temptation of buying cars, which could lead to more contact with outsiders. This domestication was important to preserve their cultural identity. Another interesting monotony which these hackers break from conventional wisdom prevailing among outsiders is that they are only eighth graders. Digressing from traditional education, they learn from their parents and grandparents and improve their skills through experience.
Since electricity does not suit the Amish ideology, hackers have resorted to alternate forms of energy such as compressed air, propane gas, and diesel engines. These work in ingenious combinations to run refrigerators, washing machines, water pumps, and even blenders in the kitchen. The Amish believe in working together as a community rather than as individuals. This helps them in several ways:
a) to learn from each other while working towards the common goal of their community,
b) to make technology affordable to the local population, and
c) to uphold their religious ideology.
The Mennonites are another group of people who follow similar beliefs as the Amish. Mennonites of the Old Order believe in staying away from the electric grid. Hackers in the Mennonite community fitted their tractors with steel wheels for farming to ensure that they used it purely for agricultural purpose and not as a convenient mode of transport. They also came up with the idea of combination wheels that used rubber blocks, belts, and flexible tracks. Different hackers in different places experimented with this combination and came up with many variations. However, over the past few decades, most Mennonites have migrated, and they do not have restrictions on the use of technology.
Such communities do not completely abstain themselves from using technology or other tools. They use their wisdom in identifying what they really require and what can be excess or ‘digression’ from their values and beliefs. They do work on progressing and improving their lifestyle, but are not in a hurry to do so since they do not want their social ontology to be disturbed in any manner. In contrast to such conservative communities, the society at large often questions the impact of technology after it is put to use and damage is done. In such conservative communities, the elders guide the younger generation into leading the austere ways of the community, even while adapting technology to meet their needs. By such encouragement, they make their system independently create and generate new things, which are unique to their ideology and people, thus creating a sense of generativity.
Thus, it can be said that hacking, in its true sense, has helped such communities to maintain the integrity even while adapting new technology to suit their goals, belief structures, or lifestyles.