Amerika

I grew up in the hacker community. We were hackers in the oldest sense, meaning that we liked to make machines do things that others couldn’t make them do. (This is unrelated to the act of stealing money by exploiting known weaknesses, which advances nothing.)

Hacking is about pushing boundaries. You look at what exists and think, “Maybe I can do something more, go further.” Like science, exploration of the frontier, or art, hacking pushes knowledge past the self-imposed limits of the social or economic forces around us.

In that community, we had a simple approach to knowledge. You invested your heart and soul in it, developed it, and then gave it away for free so others could build on it. The point was to eliminate any barriers to knowledge to accelerate the process and make it more efficient.

Day jobs were always day jobs. Things you could do in two hours that most people took eight to do. Sometimes, even less. They didn’t factor into the equation.

As a result, for the better part of twenty-five years, I’ve been producing web content along with a team of like-minded people, and giving it away. The point is to not waste time on details, but thrust us forward past the imposed social and economic boundaries of our time.

In my view, the main gift I give to friends and readers alike is the one thing I can’t replace: my time and attention. I only have so much, and I dedicate a certain amount of it to you guys, as you do in return by reading what’s written here.

However, it does involve a certain amount of cost. Thus recently we’ve begun to add ads, and are looking to add an online bookstore, and other things that will give us some financial power, which we can then use to do more.

And as people have been asking if there’s a way they can help, it makes sense to give them a chance to exercise that generosity. Hence there are several ways to help us out:

• Use our Amazon search form. Anything you buy will then contribute a percentage of the cost to us.
• Buy a book from our library. Coming soon. Essentially, the same thing, but for books you will want to own if you like what we write here.
• Donate to the costs of our hosting through our provider, Dreamhost, and help us offer faster service and more options.

To all who donate, we are thankful for your additional help. We also appreciate those who simply read, digest and pass on the ideas we have discovered, in the hopes that this will make human life more efficient and effective and push us toward new heights of greatness.