Hacker Spirit

Today, I read an article titled “Chinese people can innovate, but China cannot”. The article points out that China’s current innovation dilemma lies in the fact that government-supported state-owned enterprises and the government itself hold too much power, causing the new generation of Chinese to fear that their ideas will be stolen by large companies and the government. As a result, in order to protect their knowledge, they have to keep it secret and not share it. The article also mentions that the generation that experienced the Cultural Revolution mostly dare not challenge authority, whereas the new generation of Chinese does not have this problem.

Innovation inevitably requires the use of new methods and approaches, and the courage to challenge the unknown. However, humans are born with a fear of the unknown, which leads to a resistant attitude. (The stories of 商鞅 and 哥白尼 are examples of this.) Chinese society is a traditional one, and as people get older, their ability to accept new things decreases significantly. When middle-aged people cannot accept new things, they feel fearful, and not only are they unable to guide young people to correctly handle these new things, but they also try to eliminate them. In Western societies, the quality of citizens is relatively high, and parents’ biases against new things are relatively mild, so they can calmly guide their children to experience new things.

Moreover, Chinese people are used to following the hierarchy of seniority. In my opinion, this concept of seniority is also a major obstacle to innovation, as parents are always worried that their authoritative status will be shaken. In foreign countries, the relationship between parents and children is more equal, and this relatively equal status gives the next generation more space and encourages innovation.

Next, I’d like to talk about the lack of hacker spirit in Chinese society. On Wiki, hacker spirit is defined as “the worship of technology and the constant pursuit of innovation”. Hacker spirit is the ultimate manifestation of human problem-solving ability. It focuses on human observation of the world, exploration of the world’s essence, rather than social constructs and norms. Hackers can respond to the situation at hand, execute the most practical and correct actions, and question norms through this lens: they understand the essence of things through observation, rather than through labels. In this internet era, a person with hacker spirit can connect themselves to the internet, gather the computing power of computers and the internet, and thus amplify their individual abilities infinitely. The lack of hacker spirit can be crudely attributed to “lack of money”. Most Chinese families are not yet wealthy, so at this stage, everyone’s struggle goals are mostly materialistic - “I want to immigrate to a foreign country and buy a big villa, live a good life” => “I want to start a company and make a lot of money” => “I want to have products” => “I want to have customers” => “I want to serve users”. When everyone is thinking about how to make money every day, the hacker spirit is gradually forgotten, which is very sad.

Some time ago, Li Davi said in the Wall Street Journal that “the second generation of rich people are the true makers”. This statement can easily touch a nerve with many people, but the reasoning is not wrong. When people grow up, start a family, and begin their careers, they will encounter various pressures. Even if you try to “stay out of the world”, you still have to support your family. Life is very realistic. To have hacker spirit and pursue the limits of technology and knowledge, the most important thing is that others can provide a relatively comfortable environment.

When I was in university, I applied for the National University Student Innovation Fund. At that time, I received 20,000 yuan in funding, but before I could reimburse and get the money, my account often went into negative due to cash flow problems. Fortunately, my parents supported my studies and research, and voluntarily gave me 5,000 yuan in cash flow funding. If I didn’t have this 5,000 yuan, I wouldn’t have been able to purchase equipment without pressure, and this pressure would have slowed down my research and innovation. I had to be very careful with every penny, and it was like walking on thin ice. If it were a mature engineering project, this would be completely feasible, but for exploring innovation, unexpected things will always happen, and this pressure has a serious negative impact.

I hope that in the future, as the standard of living in China increases, Chinese society will produce a batch of people with hacker spirit.

Additionally, I’d like to say that doing research actually requires more hacker spirit. Challenging authority, challenging tradition, and innovating can lead to breakthroughs.