Thursday, December 30, 2010

Hacked Hacker

 The second day of the 27 congress of the Chaos Computer Club (27C3) has an agenda about as tight as the previous day. Hack does not necessarily mean getting the tickle a given operating system or find some of the deficiencies technological devices with which we are accustomed to live, areas where much of the conferences of the Congress, if not find alternative ways of doing things such as creating logical systems rather than electronic tire or make a given device to do something or use it for something for which there was thought, transforming a Epson printer in an affordable way to design circuits in the building motherboards.


"You have been hacked," says Corey Cerovsek (violinist and programmer) at the end of a concert that has been accompanied by Julien Quentin (piano). "Some days ago we considered how to get to a classical music concert at a conference of hackers y. .." say with some sarcasm received with laughter by the enthusiastic audience.

The two musicians with Alex antennas have created a show for the 27C3 vindicated about copyright, creative commons and free culture, performance of music from well known classical music (compositions by Debussy and Beethoven) combinandas projections filled with humor and irony video or music pieces by famous artists.

After receiving tremendous applause, the question of what type of hardware used, respond with grace to a Steinway and a Stradivarius. The congress is also a forum for projects that creatively use today's technologies. Put a rover on the moon without being part of a space agency is an arduous task.

Yet that is exactly what they are trying to get the "part-time scientists (Part Time Scientists) an international team of engineers, scientists and computer scientists. Enthusiasts on a personal basis, groups of universities and even a veteran of the Apollo program, Jack W. Crenschaw, supported by companies and institutions, are the 17 people divided into teams coordinated by Robert Boehme, systems engineer and the founder of the project.

We present the Google Lunar X Prize contest, a competition to send to the moon the first private robotic mission aerospace history. End of 2013 one of the 23 teams in the competition Gogle should actually get to take your robot to the moon, if you do not anyone be an extension until 2015.

"A relative told me about the award and I said, well, this is something I can do," says the 24 year old (the youngest of the team). Since 2007 works in his spare time with a team that has grown over time and project needs. Using innovative ideas combined with cutting edge technology also seek to reach the moon, reach the hearts of his fellows, and "to find this project as a source of inspiration." Transmission and real-time management of data over the Internet is something more than a worker in conflict zones could get nervous.

Bicyclemark (Mark Fonseca Rendeiro) is a journalist and activist with a "healthy disrespect for the journalistic conventions" as stated in its web Citizen Reporter. Afghanistan has recently been involved in the campaign to observe the elections last September, where he joined the team of international observers to teach them to use Ushahidi, crowdsourcing tool, free open source designed to share information across boundaries, and for mapping data interactively.

Very useful in crisis management (as in Haiti), although in this case was used to track the Afghan elections. One of the great advantages of this system is the speed of information management to streamline the communication of the reports of observers. The world of hackers, computers and technology is not only a source of inspiration for literature, but also occurs in reverse.

Name, terms, concepts and positions are borrowed or inspired by literature, especially science fiction, which was very assimilated in the wake of the hacker scene. With the participation of the attendees did a review of the most influential among them are well-known text, as the complete works of William Gibson (one of the fathers of cyberpunk), his collaboration with Bruce Sterling The Difference Engine ( 1990), as some of Neal Stephenson Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond Age (1995), Cryptonimcon (1999), In The Beginning ...

Was the command line (1999) and Anathem (2008). Other perhaps less known to the general public and Neverwhere (1996) by Neil Gaiman and brought to television by the BBC. There was also a room for classics like Fahrenheit 451 (1953) Rad Bradbury or Solaris (1961) by Stanislaw Lem two film versions, the first in 1972 by Andrei Tarkovsky and the latest 2002, starring George Clooney.

Just a visual report on Stanislaw Lem by six members of the Radiophonic Workshop Humboldt University of Berlin closes this second day. The story makes a fantastic journey through the life of the great Polish writer (1921-2006) mixing real events with fictionalized situations, jumping forward and backward in time and talks with his future self: "Knock, knock, knock." Come, but ...

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