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On the 4th of July, we celebrate The Founding of the United States of America.
For all peoples of the world, this holiday represents the potential for individual freedom to triumph in the eternal struggle between Liberty and Tyranny.
The Founders were very much the Hackers (in the constructive sense) of their day, using the best technology of their age to spread the radical idea that ordered liberty and the civil society could empower every individual to reach their full human potential. They knew that as human beings, those serving in office aren’t perfect, and that on the broader scale, to achieve the consensus necessary to launch the new republic short term political compromises would have to be made.
But they never lost sight of the ideals espoused in The Declaration of Independence. This is why they crafted our system of checks and balances between the branches of government. It is why they established Constitutional mechanisms by which the deeper defects of our founding documents could be cured and why countless American’s laid down their lives to end Slavery and establish racial equality.
Such epic statecraft is very much like programming and those entrusted with governmental authority could learn much from the lessons of good software engineering principles — since code, be it legal or computer, shares many of the same qualities and ought to be approached with a similar mindset.
Sadly, it is hard to convey the sense of exhilaration and personal mastery that one can derive from the act of programming. There is no greater sense of freedom than realizing that aside from a very few fundamental limits on what is “computable” by any machine, you have the power to make a computer do nearly anything you can dream of and thanks to cheap hardware, Open Courseware, Free Software, and the global community of professionals and hobbyists eager to help you, anyone anywhere on the planet can teach themselves how and by so doing amass the skills and knowledge needed to elevate their lot in the *real* world.
Tyrants everywhere quake at this potential of Personal Computing and Ubiquitous Communications to educate and rouse their citizenry to enlightenment. This is why it is so threatening to authoritarian power which would filter The Net and censor The Press.
Our Declaration of Independence and Constitution along with our technological innovations in Personal Computing that have made so many other advances possible are our gifts to the world which we most joyously share with you on this 4th of July.