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The hacker ethic 423what distinguishes the informational economy from the industrial economy.Innovation was, of course, also one of the sources of growth in the industrialeconomy, but the primary means of growth was increasing the energy inputinto the process. A bigger output was the result of a bigger input in energy(time). In the informational economy, companies increasingly compete on thebasis of innovation, and more and more workers have moved from routineexecuting work, such as classic assembly-line work, to jobs that involve innovating(Castells, 2002).THE CULTURE OF THE INFORMATIONAL ECONOMYTogether, the above three developments (the change in company structure, thechange in labor market structure, and the change in the role of innovation forgrowth) constitute an economy that is very different from the industrial economy.The culture of this economy can be approached in an illuminating waythrough the work ethic of the builders of the technological foundation of theinformational economy. This group originally called themselves “hackers,”meaning by this, not computer criminals but, in the words of the hacker Jargonfile compiled on the Net, people who “program enthusiastically” and whobelieve that “information-sharing is a powerful positive good” (Raymond,2000b). This formed the “hacker ethic” (see also Levy, 1994).This creative impulse, combined with the idea of sharing information, wasbehind the creation of the Internet and the World Wide Web and the softwareused to run it, such as the Linux/Unix operating system (Abbate, 1999;Berners-Lee, 1999; Himanen, 2001). Eric Raymond, who has been one of themost visible participants in this hacker culture, has formulated its work ethicwell. In the following extract, Raymond speaks of the “Unix philosophy”because of context, but his description applies to the larger hacker culture. For“Unix philosophy,” read “hacker ethic”:To do the Unix philosophy right, you have to be loyal to excellence. You have tobelieve that software is a craft worth all the intelligence and passion you can muster. . . Software design and implementation should be a joyous art, and a kind of ahigh-level play. If this attitude seems preposterous or vaguely embarrassing to you,stop and think; ask yourself what you’ve forgotten. Why do you design softwareinstead of doing something else to make money or pass the time? You must havethought software was worthy of your passions once . . . To do the Unix philosophyright, you need to have (or recover) that attitude. You need to care. You need to play.You need to be willing to explore. (Raymond, 2000a)The same kind of philosophy is repeated in the descriptions of the founders ofkey IT companies, and their work culture. For example, Andy Bechtolsheim,