Hackerkultur in Deutschland vs. den USA: Ähnliche Anfänge, unterschiedliche Entwicklungen

Elliot Williams hat auf Hackaday ausführlich über die Hackerkulturen in Deutschland und den USA geschrieben. Im ersten Teil, »A Tale of Two Countries«, thematisiert er die ähnlichen Anfänge der jeweiligen Hackerkulturen und beschreibt, wieso die US-amerikanische in den 1990er Jahren eine Wende erlebte und daraus deutlich geschwächt hervorging. Im zweiten Teil, »Rise of the CCC and Hackerspaces«, nimmt er sich der Geschichte des CCC an und verdeutlicht, warum dieser in Medien, Gesellschaft und Politik eine bedeutende und anerkannte Rolle einnimmt. Zudem geht Williams der Frage nach, was US-amerikanische Hackerspaces von den deutschen lernen können und wie sie sich zukünftig besser vernetzen können.

The article that sparked me to write this is titled „Why Hackers are so Important for Society.“ You know why, and I know why; because we take things apart and think about how they work on a fundamental level: from consumer electronics to encryption protocols. But imagine reading that headline in an American newspaper.

German hackers have enough respect that the German government frequently takes testimony from representatives of the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) on matters of IT security, electronic voting machines, data freedom, and similar areas of expertise. The press, and not just the computer press, comes to the CCC when they have a story to check out. The Pirate Party, founded at the c-base hackerspace in Berlin, actually got enough votes to have representation in four German state parliaments in 2012, and a single representative in the EU parliament. While it’s certainly not the case that every German would say “hackers” are a force for good, their media presence and overall political and societal impact is orders of magnitude better than in the USA.

How this came to pass, and what it could suggest for US hacker society, is worth thinking about. I don’t claim to have all the answers; part of this essay is an attempt to open up a dialog by comparison. But it’s important to think about why US hackers are marginalized, or why German hackers are (almost) normal members of society, especially while the views of the tech-savvy are increasingly needed in public debate.