Facebook IPO: Mark Zuckerberg's bizarre ode to hackers
With social networking giant Facebook having filed for initial public offering to the US Securities and Exchange Commission on Wednesday, the company's CEO Mark Zuckerberg released somewhat of a quasi-philosophical letter in coincidence with the high-profile event.
Touching upon a number of issues, ranging from the nature of personal relationships to the role that technology can play in political cataclysm, Zuckerberg's letter strangely contained a rather bizarre ode to "the hacker way."
The individualist and un-businesslike Zuckerberg said in the letter that though the word `hacker' characteristically has a negative undertone, with media often projecting it as a community of people breaking into computer systems, hacking simply means the ability to develop something quickly or to test the boundaries of all possible options in a particular case.
Terming "the hacker way" as "an approach to building that involves continuous improvement and iteration," Zuckerberg elaborated that "hackers believe that something can always be better, and that nothing is ever complete." He also said that hackers have to "fix" certain things, and that too "in the face of people who say it's impossible or are content with the status quo."
Further adding that hacking, like everything else, can be used for good or bad reasons, Zuckerberg peculiarly pointed out in his letter that the "vast majority" of hackers he had met appeared to be "idealistic people who want to have a positive impact on the world."
