So if theres one thing I want to leave you here with today, its that the next time you think about who a hacker is, you think not of this guy but of this guy, Benjamin Franklin, who was one of the greatest hackers of all time. He was one of Americas most prolific inventors, though he famously never filed a patent, because he thought that all human knowledge should be freely available. He brought us bifocals and the lightning rod, and of course there was his collaboration on the invention of American democracy. And in Code For America, we really try to embody the spirit of Ben Franklin. He was a tinkerer and a statesman whose conception of citizenship was always predicated on action. He believed that government could be built by the people, and we call those people civic hackers. So its no wonder that the values that underly a healthy democracy, like collaboration and empowerment and participation and enterprise, are the same values that underly the Internet. And so its no surprise that many hackers are turning their attention to the problem of government.
Posted on: Wed, 19 Mar 2014 12:09:19 +0000
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