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One sign that 2017 was a rough year, as if we needed any more, was the emergence of "hacking" as a mainstream concern. Formerly a kind of black magic practiced by nerds (and occasionally by Angelina Jolie), hacking is now better understood as a result of human error—on the part of the user, the creator of what got hacked, or both. In 2017 we refined our understanding of hacking in this original, narrower sense but we also expanded its definition well beyond that. It’s no longer just computers that get hacked, but elections, institutions, societies, and, well, our brains. This broader usage of hacking describes a nefarious external interference in a process that normally works in a certain predictable and logical way, and in this usage, you might notice a problem: We can’t unambiguously say how institutions and cultures and brains are supposed to work, at least not like we can about software, so maybe hacking isn’t the perfect word (on the other hand, software influences all of these more than ever, so they’re also more susceptible to literal hacking, if only indirectly).
The above definition of hacking evokes architecture, which also fails when designer error meets "user error." Newly constructed buildings are perfect until proven otherwise, as usually happens once the first people move in. Buildings can even get hacked, as Geoff Manaugh points out in A Burglar’s Guide to the City and his brilliant reflection on Die Hard. When a building fails due to user error the architects and builders still take most of the blame, by definition. Now, thanks to higher-than-ever stakes and increasingly spectacular breaches, software is finally arriving at a similar arrangement. Eight years ago, setting your Twitter password to ‘123456’ and thus compromising the account was your fault, even if everyone else was doing it too; today, it would be Twitter’s fault for letting you, which is why they don’t. People are a mess and we need good infrastructure to save us from ourselves.
So, if American culture was indeed hacked by Russians in 2016, who are the designers we can blame? Obviously, there aren’t any, but if there were, we wouldn’t say they did a great job. Raymond Chandler wrote in 1939 that "the only part of a California house you can't put your foot through is the front door.” In other words, they were poorly-built houses, their doors a form of security theater that wouldn’t stop real intruders. If subverting an election or inciting unrest is as easy as shitposting on Facebook, that suggests a grave societal fragility not unlike Chandler’s flimsy California houses—bad design and bad materials. Whether you're an individual, a building, a computer, or a country, we're starting to learn, how you get hacked is who you are.
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Until next time,
Drew
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