I won’t install you any software anymore.

Yeah, you read that right. I would not install you any software. Never. For once, I’m usually paid for it already, and it’s the lamest part of my job,the one that I hate the most: making things works for people who do not want to understand how it works. My work, as an IT worker is to do everything that’s possible to keep the flow of information flowing in the company I work for. It includes updating and maintaining complex system architecture, but alos interacting with people who do not want to bother to understand. They think they’re beyond this, trying to sell stuff and that computers are just in the middle of their way to get things done, that there is a kind of secret sect of computers trying to undermine their job.

I’ll be glad if it was the case, at least computers could try to teach people what they’re doing wrong. But they are simply information treatment machine, they do exactly what you asks for. They do not takes initiative or working in your back. They are delicate machine we engineered to ease your life, not to make it harder. I admit we did not get some stuff right, we have problem with some UI that goes in your way to work. But then, you come at me and just yell, just as if it’s an evidence and that we exist only to makes you happy (go get a life if that’s the case):

It does not work.

Yeah. Right. Not a bug report. Redirect to /dev/null. ‘It’ could be a lot of stuff (from the keyboard to the mainframe your connected on, I’ve got at least 10 systems that you use everyday without noticing, and each one of them can be a It. Or any part of it could be the It. It’s like heading at the Financial office and yelling at them:

There’s a problem.

They will probably ignore you, and they’ll be right to do so. And you’ll do some reasearch trying to find what’s wrong, what part of the fianncial report you read seems wrong to you, and why. That will takes you probably a good part of your day, then you can formulate a problematic to submit them. Why don’t you make it for computer? They are full of warning and errors, the one that get clicked off faster than light. Softwware and computer parts have name and version number extremly easy to find, and explicit (at least for me), error message. SO why don’t you send me a documented bug report as you’re going to do with any other problem you’ll ever encounter?

You gonna say ‘I do not know zip about computer’. That’s right, that’s not a problem per se, but it means you do not want this situation to evolve. You’ll come two weeks later with teh exact same problem without having done the effort to learn about it and to try to work around. And you do not know nothing about financial problems, but you’ll try to understand how it works and learn. So you’re next argument "I’m not here to learn", is a fail. You learn everyday you work, that’s why you’re betetr now than two years ago.

So, mainly, I’m confronted everyday with people that do not want to learn. That’s why I won’t install you software, becasue if y’oure doing it yourself you will learn and understand how things works.

Let me explain you

I will, however, spend a huge amount of time to answer all your questions. You’ve got to understand that most of teh question you’ll ask will probably looks trivial to me and that’s why I’ll slap you hard on your head with Read That Fucking Manual, use man, man man works too and other go seeks onthe internet, the answer is in the first page. I’m doing it beacuse those questions are of no interests for me, and because you’re going to learn to learn by yourself.

I’m a fierce defenser of free knowledge. So I try to share it with people willing to. You do not want to learn or to make the necessary mental effort to do so? You can die. I won’t move to helps you. One day, maybe, you will coem at me asking me how to go around the fracking DRM, or how to surf without being monitored. I’ll try to not hold gruudge and I’ll try to explain you again the exact same thing you do not want to know before. So, I won’t event try to explain things to people who do not asks questions. It’s a loss of time for both of us, I have better things to do, and you have some porn to watch.

Because this is the main problem. You think computer or knowledge is not necessary as long as you do have what you want. But a brainless citizen is no more a citizen than a cow (and cows are really stupid) or a sheep. Following the amss because the mass must probably know what’s good for them. Following them, happy to be a sheep in the sheep yard until you see the knife of the butcher. Until it’s too late and you’ll die in terror sith the rest of the sheep, while the black sheep will yells "I told you so. I warned you. And you did not wanted to listen, you have what you deserve". The black sheep won’t laugh, or be happy. Evene if you throw shit at his face all the time, even if you’ve laughed at him because he was awkward inhigh school, choosing to talk to computers instead of regular sheeps.

This is what I feel, each time someone told me ‘What’s ACTA?’ or ‘I’m bothered with you’re computer bullshit’. I’m sad because this is what have led us here. With private interests going over public ones. With banks ruling countries. With music industries trying to protect themselves and writing laws, and closing down websites. That’s why I was raging against you when Megaupload was shut down by foreign companies. I was sad because we tried to warn you. You necessarily got the message (with Telecomix, we’ve hit most of the national newspaper and radio of Europe, even the Wall Street Journal had written on us, and on ACTA) so you knew. You just did think that this kind of shit won’t happen because it’s a sad thought and that will change your mood and the way you look at the world.

You do not want toget burned by the world outside. That’s understandable. But then stop complaining about it. Or try to fix things.

This is what we do

We. Hackers. The weird kids in town. I can speak for all of them, so will wpeak for me. I grew up in a world that do not suit me. I’m rather tall and extremly thin. I was alone most of my time at school, at least until my graduation. So I spent all the time you spend in parties, hitting on girl, getting wasted, to learn. I assemble my computer myself, I learned Linux the hard way (back in the time, early Internet here, I needed to use another computer to get the documentation) with noone to help me. I’m not complaining, I learned a lot. And I’ve done this because I wanted to understand how things works. I wanted to unscrew everything and to adapt it to my needs. You were doing the exact opposite things: adapting your needs to your environment. You wanted the thing everybody wants, you let people decides for your future.

We, in the meantime, tried to understand how the world was working to change it. We want to change it because it is broken, it does not work in a way that suits humanity. So we learn. When a law appeared in a parliament that we think will destroy some liberties, we learn about the democratic process in the EU, the US Senate, the French parliament, we learned about laws, we read and process the huge amount of paper that no one was supposed to read, we find flaws and we sued them to try to subvert the system. We thrive by knowledge, this is our weapon, this is our life. That’s why we have a lot of conference and formal or informal meetings, that’s why I enjoy going at the CCC to meet people and learn what they did last year.

A world without a total openness and free sharing of knowledge is a world we reject fiercely.