Lifehacking - a New Social Phenomenon Inspired by the Hacker Culture

Michał Pręgowski

English version of the article

Since its foundation, the Internet is constantly being influenced by its users who tend to adjust it to their own needs. Manuel Castells called it the self-evolution of the Internet. It is important to note that hackers played a particularly important role in creating and forming of the Internet. In a classic article "How to become a hacker", Eric S. Raymond defined the group as people who "solve problems and build things, and [...] believe in freedom and voluntary mutual help". The author ascertained that the hacker philosophy is not limited to computer environment. It is not indeed, as lifehacking, the new Internet phenomenon in North America, shows. One of the particularly interesting aspects of lifehacking is its ability to transport ideas of the old Internet culture back into the common, often non-computerized life. This tendency is rather rare as of now, but definitely worth noticing. Lifehacking, nevertheless, can also be seen as a part of a wide debate about the positive and negative influence of the Internet on human life. Presented here were the origins of the phenomenon, its relations with hacking, as well as its social usefulness and perspective future.

KEYWORDS

hacking, lifehacking, hacker ethics, elite culture of the early Internet