Think of literacy before books. Only priests could read, so only priests could rule. Early hackers tore that script apart. One table had hardware boards, another had code diffs, both teaching the same lesson: power spreads when knowledge is explained, not hidden. The real heroes weren’t gatekeepers. They were translators who turned machines into a common language.
There were always two paths. One cloaked in mystique, guarded by jargon and sealed boxes. The other sat in garages and swap meets, where mistakes became lessons and lessons became community. The second path won. It turned hacking into a civic craft. It refused temples and invited bazaar stalls where everyone could try.
Tech literacy is power
Technical literacy is power literacy. When only priests can read, only priests can rule. The True Hackers lived on scarce cycles and judged status by what ran under pressure. The Hardware Hackers lived at swap meets and community terminals and judged success by how many new hands got dangerous in the good way. The software crowd hated the priests in the temple, then some became priests once their abstractions hardened into black boxes. That is the drift to resist.
Demystification wins. Homebrew turned computing into a civic skill, not a credential. The modern equivalent recently was Andrej Karpathy’s “Digital Hygiene” guide. No sneering. Just a clean checklist that upgrades anyone who follows it: https://karpathy.bearblog.dev/digital-hygiene/. This came at the peak of vulnerabilities introduced with vibe coding and people being convinced that what they were building was safe to build.
Common Issue
If you’re technical, you’ve already had someone approach you with shaky code or a half-formed idea. Maybe it’s “can you build this app for me,” maybe it’s a vibe-coded pull request. The temptation is to dismiss it outright and protect your own status. But that reaction shrinks the circle. Communities that matter, like Homebrew, grew because they treated mistakes as part of the process. They didn’t demand polish, they rewarded curiosity and persistence.
The problem isn’t the mistake itself. The problem is how we deliver feedback. You can shut someone down with one sharp comment, or you can open a door by showing them how to trace input, invariants, and failure points. Delivery multiplies or kills momentum. Bad delivery keeps newcomers silent. Good delivery builds people who come back sharper. It’s not about guarding the temple. It’s about explaining how the wires connect so the next person can try again without shame.
Paul Graham’s disagreement pyramid is useful here. The higher you go, the stronger the community becomes.
Level 1: name-calling
Level 2: ad hominem (attack the person, not the point)
Level 3: respond to tone
Level 4: contradiction without evidence
Level 5: counterargument with reasoning
Level 6: refutation with quotes and logic
Level 7: directly refuting the central point
If we want to build in public, we should live at the highest level of this pyramid. Don’t sneer. Don’t flex. Argue the point, not the person. Teach, demystify, and keep the circle open. That’s how you turn mistakes into momentum.
Sacrificing your beliefs for money
Commercial pressure selects. Some of that selection is healthy. Usability and reliability scale the ethic. Some of it corrodes. Lock-in, dark patterns, silent telemetry, and sealed boxes that turn users into tenants.
Surveillance tech sharpens the dilemma. Palantir and its peers show how the same tools that coordinate disaster response can also centralize oversight and chill dissent if steered that way. The question is not whether a tool can be used for both. It is whether you design with exit rights, least privilege, visible seams, and honest tradeoffs so power does not quietly ratchet.
Measuring success
Money is a magnet. It pulls in allies and also heat-seekers who want shine without standard. I learned that the hard way.
If a design increases central control, hides tracking, or cannot be justified plainly to the user, it fails the soul test even if it wins the quarter. I build like an optimist who believes access lifts people. I ship like a pessimist who assumes capture is possible and designs for exit, least privilege, and clear seams.
Success is impact on people I can name. My cofounder’s energy and happiness. My mentees landing real wins and becoming teachers themselves. Users who giggle when the thing finally clicks and their eyes light up like they just unlocked a new level. Freedom is non-negotiable. I will not build tech that harms people or strips agency. You can make targeting smarter or detection sharper and call it progress. If it erodes freedom, you traded the soul for a dashboard.
Money alone is the wrong metric. I track whether the work expands agency, deepens trust, and leaves a trail others can learn from. If I can explain it under stress, defend it to the people it touches, and see it make someone braver, that counts as success.