In his Theogony and Works & Days (1), Hesiod makes his hatred for women clear. Women represent the element of uncertainty in Man’s perfectly ordered universe, deceiving, manipulating, and causing all sorts of head-aches. Yet the very same misogynistic Hesiod speaks of goddesses with reverence because the female immortals play nicely within patriarchy, even when their mortal counterparts do not. Women on earth evade control with their ability to give birth and provide sexual fulfillment. Without women, men are lost, doomed to end their days without sons. And while the immortals do not want or need sons, or even want them, they still find themselves subject to unavoidable sexual urges. Early goddesses had the power to overthrow divine kings thanks to their monopoly on childbearing. Zeus only manages to end the cycle of usurpation by giving birth himself, thus claiming the power as his own and gaining absolute authority over all gods and goddesses. The introduction of women to the mortal world, however, brings chaos to the otherwise ordered and self-sufficient patriarchy by making men dependent on sexual temptation and birth.

Before Zeus, only the goddesses could give birth. No male god ever has children of his own accord. In fact, most of Theogony is simply a divine family tree: “From the Abyss were born Erebos and dark Night. / And Night, pregnant after sweet intercourse / with Erebos, gave birth to Aether and Day.” (2) Indeed, such is the power of these early goddesses, that they are able to give birth without male gods at all: Gaia, the Earth, “gave birth to the barren raging Sea / Without any sexual love.” (3) These goddesses hardly even need their male counterparts, for they alone have the ability to populate the cosmos.

The gods run up against the power of goddesses when they try to maintain strict control. Nowhere is this more evident than in the story of Ouranos’ usurpation. Ouranos, son and lover of Gaia, hates his children, for “they were Gaia’s most dreaded offspring, / And from the start their father feared and loathed them. / Ouranos used to stuff all of his children / Back into a hollow of Earth soon as they were born.” (4) Understandably, this upsets Gaia, who in turn devises a plot to overthrow him. She uses her sexual appeal to lure him into a trap: “And now on came great Ouranos, brining Night with him. / And, longing for love, he settled himself all over Earth [Gaia].” (5) Then their son Kronos, waiting in ambush, leaps out an castrates Ouranos, thereby become the new ruler of the immortals. But his power is not absolute — he soon falls prey to sexual desire himself. “Later, Kronos forced himself upon Rheia, / And she gave birth to a splendid brood… And Kronos swallowed them all down as soon as each / Issued from Rheia’s holy womb onto her knees.” (6) Once again, the god’s attempt to remove all uncertainty fails. Rheia tricks Kronos by feeding him a boulder instead of baby Zeus, then hiding Zeus so that he, too, can overthrow his father. These goddesses user their exclusive powers of sex appeal and childbearing to bring chaos to the gods’ attempts at order.

Zeus is able to overcome those limitations to his power and establish complete control. He ends the cycle of usurpation by eating his first wife, Metis, before she is able to give birth to a son. Thus he takes the female aspects of power into himself, and “from his own head he gave birth to owl-eyed Athena.” (7) The goddesses no longer have a monopoly on birth — now Zeus has that power, too. And while his predecessors succumb to the wiles of goddesses, Zeus maintains control even in his many liaisons. Zeus’s rise to power marks the end of the early goddesses’s reign of chaos. By claiming all power for himself, even that which normally reserved for females, Zeus eliminates chaos and becomes the perfect patriarch.

The new Olympian goddesses, in contrast to their powerful forebears, are dependent on Zeus for their domains. Even Athena, whom Hesiod makes an arbiter of justice, “sits down by the son of Kronos, her father, / And speaks to him about men’s unjust hearts” (8) so that Zeus himself can make them pay. The Muses may inspire kings and make their words powerful and their judgments sound, but Hesiod is careful to note that “kings come from Zeus.” (9) The goddess Hekate is given almost overwhelming power, able to grant victory and glory in war and physical contests, but it is Zeus who grants that power to her: “Hekate, whom Zeus son of Kronos / Has esteemed above all and given splendid gifts, / A share of the earth as her own, and of the barren sea.” (10) Zeus, now the ultimate arbiter of all things, gives out power little by little to whomever he chooses. In Hesiod’s ordered cosmos, all authority must come directly from Zeus.

Early on, mankind enjoys an earthly paradise provided by Prometheus’s gift of fire to mankind. It does not last long, however, as Zeus soon puts an end to their independence with the creation of women. “When he saw the distant gleam of fire among men, / And straight off gave them trouble to pay for the fire.” (11) Fire allows men to be self-sufficient, but at the expense of compromising Zeus’ power. For all the effort Zeus put into gaining control of the pantheon, men gain control over their environment without any work at all. Before Pandora, men “lived off the land without any trouble, no hard work, / No sickness or pain that the Fates give to men.” (12) But Zeus commissions the creation of Pandora to bring chaos to men, and as the famous story goes, she releases all the sorrows from which men must now suffer. Pandora herself is the greatest misery of all, for “from her is the race of female women, / A great infestation among mortal men.” (13) Zeus punishes mankind for flaunting his authority by giving them something which they cannot control and yet must depend upon for survival.

Mortal men are indeed dependent on women, for the female race provides both sexual fulfillment and sons. Pandora, “the sheer deception, irresistible to men” (14), shows how women can use their sex appeal to take advantage of men’s weakness. Hesiod warns about women using this ability to manipulate men: “Don’t let a sashaying female pull the wool over your eyes / With her flirtatious lies. She’s fishing for your barn. / Trust a woman and you’d as well trust a thief.” (15) Men lose control around a tempting woman. Even if women don’t take advantage of the effect they have on men, they still introduce chaos into the ordered patriarchy.

Mortal women not just tempting, but essential to mortal men, for only birth can counteract the force of inevitable death. Thanks to Zeus, the female once again has the exclusive power to bring children into the world, and “whoever escapes marriage / And women’s harm, comes to deadly old age / Without any son to support him.” (16) The male is still dominant, but he does not have control over is the continuation of his lineage. Of course, men still try to control their wives — Hesiod suggests that you “marry her a virgin so you can teach her prudent ways.” (17) But the male-dominated society of Archaic Greece, at least according to Hesiod, fails to achieve complete authority due to uncontrollable aspects of women.

The story of Zeus’s rise to power is a story of a single god overcoming all the chaos in the universe and putting it in order. In this universe, the female represents the chaos, the uncontrollable, the unknowable. Until Zeus gives birth to Athena, only a goddess has the power to bring new life into the world. However, just as Zeus triumphs over chaos in the end, rending the power of birth from the goddesses, mortal man is thrown into chaos with the introduction of Pandora. Men may try to control women, but women cannot fully be controlled — for while men may refuse to put up with the fairer sex, they will ultimately die without sons to continue their lineage. Men need women, and so can never be fully independent or self-sufficient as they were at one time in the mythical past. Hesiod is justifiably frustrated at having to rely on something he cannot control, forced to incorporate chaos into what would otherwise be a perfect order. Indeed, the Olympian gods and goddesses provide such an order for Hesiod — a divine patriarchy in which Zeus has absolute authority. But for mortal men, women will always represent that part of life which cannot be completely dominated.

Notes:

1. Hesiod. Works & Days and Theogony. Trans. Stanley Lombardo. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Co., 1993.

2. Theogony, lines 123-125.

3. ibid, lines 131-132.

4. ibid, lines 154-157.

5. ibid, lines 177-178.

6. ibid, lines 456-464.

7. ibid, line 929.

8. Works & Days, lines 299-300.

9. Theogony, line 97.

10. ibid, lines 413-415.

11. ibid, lines 571-572.

12. Works & Days, lines 111-113.

13. Theogony, lines 594-596.

14. ibid, line 593.

15. Works & Days, lines 419-421.

16. Theogony, lines 607-609.

17. Works & Days, line 773.

The 1920′s should be called the Dreaming Decade. Everyone in America was dreaming of a better future, more freedom, or a safer community. Women had won the vote and now turned to overthrowing old traditions. Blacks migrated north to the promises of a better life. There were also those dreaming of a return to tradition. The Ku Klux Klan and fundamentalists promoted racial purity and stronger faith. President Hoover stated his dream, shared by many Americans during the Roaring 20′s, when he said, “We in America today are nearer to the final triumph over poverty than ever before in the history of any land.” (Zinn 378) Everybody and their dog had a dream, and these dreams were what shaped the country and the world. Things would get better, progress would be made. The Dreaming Decade was full of optimism.

Women began dreaming of independence. In the first year of the new decade, they secured the right to vote. They proceeded to invade the work-place and college campuses. A new type of woman emerged that represented a departure from all previous stereotypes, who felt it “no longer necessary to maintain a rigid, Victorian female ‘respectability.’ They could smoke, drink, dance, wear seductive clothes and makeup, and attend lively parties.” (Brinkley 667) These women were called flappers. They were at the extreme, but their endeavors to become better than their parents’ generation reflected the attitude of many young women of the age.

Marketers were quick to latch onto the dreams of the New Woman. Marlboro began targeting cigarette ads to women. Cosmetics and beauty products, unpopular with the flappers’ mothers, became essential. During this period when women were looking for a new image, products were helping to define it. Advertisements played on women’s new insecurities with their bodies, their beauty, and their age. Women were dependent on media images to define how they should look and behave. The dream of women’s independence failed as its very image became dependent on marketing.

African-Americans also dreamed of freedom and independence from the old ways. Chicago and other northern cities promised to fulfill that dream by offering jobs and a tolerant atmosphere. Most blacks lived in the South as sharecroppers and tenant farmers. When the boll weevil ravaged the cotton crops, they were left with lower wages and unemployment. With the rise of the new Ku Klux Klan, lynchings became more frequent. “Every time a lynching takes place in a community down south… you can depend on it that colored people will arrive within two weeks.” (Tuttle 4) Even when black people weren’t being killed, they were being abused, segregated, and forced to live in poor conditions. “I suppose the worst place there is better than the best place here.” (2) The dreams of the North where the beginnings of the Great Migration.

The North held many promises for black people, but Chicago wasn’t always as great as it was made out to be. “Their aspirations for economic, political, and social rebirth were soon shattered by their reception in the city.” (Tuttle 5) The South was not the only place of prejudice. The high concentration of immigrants in the North made it a prime target of the Klan, where many resented the influx of foreigners that took away jobs. Blacks were now foreigners, migrants working along with the immigrants in hard, low-paying jobs. Unions like the AFL “often worked actively to exclude blacks… Most blacks, however, worked in jobs in which the AFL took no interest in at all – as janitors, dishwashers, garbage collectors, domestics, and other service capacities.” (Brinkley 661) Blacks in America had gone from slavery to sharecropping to service-workers. Their dreams of improvement and freedom went unfulfilled, ever after the Great Migration.

The Ku Klux Klan had dreams, too. They wanted racial purity, an America free from black people. The very aspirations of blacks helped fuel the Klan’s rebirth in the twenties, but “fear of the ‘New Negro’ rapidly declined as he either accepted his old place or moved to northern cities.” (Higham 5) This time around, however, the Klan had expanded their dream of “Native, white, Protestant supremacy.” (Colin 1) Jews, Catholics, and foreigners were terrorized. The Klan became widely popular, supported by many that believed that immigrants “undermined the whole economic system.” (Higham 2)

Fortunately or unfortunately, the KKK’s dream was doomed from the start. There were far too many immigrants to lynch or return them all. They had lived in America, some for generations, and had become Americans. “Anti-Klan mobs were beginning to lash back at the organization in areas where immigrants were strongly entrenched.” (Higham 6) There were more people who the Klan worked against than it worked for, and even some of those disagreed with its ways. Everyone had dreams of their own, but the Klan’s dream worked against many other people’s. “Explicitly, racism denied the regnant optimism of the Progressive era.” (Higham 3) Scandals involving high-ranking Klansmen caused distrust in the organization that had been founded on so-called moral principals, and finally led to its downfall. The racial purity they dreamed about was not to be.

Prohibition was another movement that represented the dream to return to tradition. It banned the manufacture, sale, and consumption of alcoholic beverages in 1920. Alcohol was associated with drunken violence, especially toward women and children in the home. It was also connected to immigrants, to which alcohol was part of everyday life. Many “Drys” were the same sort that supported the Ku Klux Klan, “fundamentalists: provincial, largely… rural men and women fighting to preserve traditional faith and to maintain the centrality of religion in American life.” (Brinkley 673) Prohibition was accompanied by other fundamentalist movements, such as banning the teaching of evolution in schools. The goal of these movements was to promote the dream of a traditional nation.

One of the famous trademarks of the twenties was the violation of Prohibition. Banning alcohol actually caused more problems than it solved. “Since an enormous, lucrative industry was now barred to legitimate businessmen, organized-crime figures took it over.” (Brinkley 671) Gangs used profits to move into prostitution, gambling, and drugs. Prohibition increased alcohol-related violence instead of preventing it. Gangs competed for the control of bootlegging, resulting in 500 deaths in Chicago alone. The drinks themselves were more dangerous – homemade alcohol could cause blindness and death. Still, the demand for it went unabated. Even the police could be bought off by bootleggers. The fundamentalists lost ground in their push for Creationist teachings, as well. The Scopes trial in 1925 revealed them to be narrow-minded and their position anti-progress. The dream of bringing back old traditions and preventing the harm alcohol could bring was crushed by the negative response to Prohibition.

The dreams could not mask reality. Most dreams were never to come true. This was the dual identity of the Dreaming Decade. There were wonderful dreams, but they sowed the seeds for their own destruction. Women sought to create a new image, and found it not in themselves, but in the products sold to them. Black Americans went north to escape the clinging bonds of slavery, but found new shackles, this time in the unfamiliar streets of Chicago. The Ku Klux Klan, whose dream was obviously a horrible nightmare for many, failed nonetheless. Prohibition’s more noble goal ended up causing the problems it tried to fix. Even Hoover’s dream of ending poverty was ridiculous when “the top 0.5 percent of Americans in 1929 owned 32.4 percent of all the net worth of individuals.” (McElvaine 3) The dreams of a nation lay broken at the end of the Dreaming Decade. Perhaps the Great Depression affected people’s spirits so greatly because they had much more than money invested in the failed dreams. The 1920′s were full of hope but devoid of solutions. A fitful and universal name for those years would be the Dreaming Decade – the era of dreams.

Works Cited

• Brinkley, Alan. The Unfinished Nation. Boston: McGraw-Hill, 1993.

• Gordon, Colin. “The Ku Klux Klan Defines Americanism.” Major Problems in American History, 1920-1945. Houghton Mifflin, 1926.

• Higham, John. “The Tribal Twenties.” Strangers in the Land: Patterns of American Nativism. New Jersey: Trustees of Rutgers College, 1955.

• McElvaine, Robert S. “Who Was Roaring in the Twenties? – Origins of the Great Depression.” The Great Depression: America, 1929-1941. New York: Times Books, 1984.

• Tuttle, William M., Jr. “Going into Canaan.” Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919. New York: Atheneum, 1970.

• Zinn, Howard. A People’s History of the United States. New York: Harper Perennial, 1980.

Why Open Source Works

The modern phenomenon of open source software has everybody asking questions. Namely, why would anyone give away what they could just as easily sell? It turns out that the answer to this question also answers the next: how do hundreds of people collaborate on large open source projects? The motivations that drive participation also lead to qualities that encourage successful large-scale production of software. The individual hacker (a term I use to mean amateur programmer and open source participant) feels fulfilled by doing challenging and creative work. He earns the community’s respect through collaboration, and the cooperation of all his fellow hackers ensures that the project’s goals are met. This is not unlike the happy Troglodytes of Montesquieu’s Persian Letters who worked together to succeed where their selfish cousins fought amongst themselves and failed. The cooperative advantage is plainly seen in the success of open source today, and that success is rooted in the intrinsic motivations of the individual hacker. The very things that get them to work get them to work together.

The emergence of open source communities originated with the rise of the internet. It is in the internet’s unique environment that open source flourishes. It’s one of the few places where ideas ideas and information are freely exchanged, and this very ability is key to harnessing the creative energy of hackers. However, hackers were sharing long before the internet was thought of. In 1955, a computer users group called SHARE (“The Society to Help Alleviate Redundant Effort”) was founded at IBM, only four years after the UNIVAC, the first commercially available computer, was released (Lum et al). Real hacker culture began to emerge at MIT in 1961 as students developed their own tools and slang – they were also the first to call themselves “hackers” (Raymond 8).

It wasn’t until the end of the sixties that ARPANET, the predecessor of the internet, came online (Lum et al). It was the first high-speed computer network to cross the country, and it connected isolated hacker groups around the United States (Raymond 9). Interestingly, as hackers developed a thriving culture based on sharing, Bill Gates wrote an open letter to computer hobbyists asking, “who can afford to do professional work for nothing?” The very next year, Bruce Perens wrote the first draft of “The Open Source Definition” (Lum et al).

Open source emerged on the internet because its electronic mailing lists allowed hackers to communicate and cooperate. To this day mailing lists are the major tools of communication for open source projects. Some early projects included Richard Stallman’s efforts to create high quality tools for the Unix operating system. In 1982, he began an ambitious project to produce an entire set of free Unix tools under the name GNU (for “GNU’s Not Unix”) (Raymond 17-18). However, it was not until 1991 that a full clone of Unix was produced. Using Stallman’s GNU tools, Linus Torvalds created the first version of his operating system, Linux, and submitted it to mailing lists for feedback (Lum et al). This was the first example of large-scale collaboration done via open source. “[Linux] was rather casually hacked on by huge numbers of volunteers coordinating only through the internet” (Raymond 24).

The volunteers working on Linux are just like those working on open source projects everywhere today. It is their motivations that drive the production of Linux and maintain its structural integrity despite its size and complexity. The first and most obvious of these motivations is creativity. “The programmer, like the poet, works only slightly removed from pure thought-stuff. He builds his castles in the air, from air, creating by exertion of the imagination” (Brooks 7). Computer languages are not so different from human languages, as both allow for powerful self-expression. In Lakhani and Wolf’s survey on “Why Hackers Do What They Do,” creativity was found to be the “lead driver of individual effort” (16). As artists, hackers derive a great deal of fulfillment from solving hard problems and writing great code.

Software development can become as passionate an endeavor as poetry, and just dependent on skill. “Software is intellectual property. You have to have intellects at work in order to get software” (McCarthy 30). One interesting facet of the intellectual exertion is flow. Flow is a state of mind reached during intense focus on one’s work, almost like meditation. In flow, the hacker does not perceive effort – or the passage of time or the surrounding environment (DeMarco and Lister 63). It also represents the height of creative involvement and enjoyment. If the task is too easy or too difficult, boredom or anxiety prevent that optimal state of activity called flow (Lakhani and Wolf 4). It’s not always simple for a hacker to find a problem that’s “just right,” but when he does, it is one of the most rewarding experiences of his creative life (ibid 11).

Intrinsic motivations bring people to software development, and they also encourage them to participate specifically in open source projects. Software companies enforce deadlines and production needs with strict management hierarchies and strong pressure. The traditional economic model behind these practices views human behavior as extrinsically motivated: “People change their actions because they are induced to do so by an external intervention” (Lakhani and Wolf 6). However, DeMarco and Lister found that corporate software projects on which there was no schedule pressure were the most productive in their study (29). “There is nothing more discouraging to any worker than the sense that his own motivation is inadequate and has to be ‘supplemented’ by that of his boss” (ibid 9). On open source projects, all hackers work because of their own intrinsic motivation, so there is no need for control (Brand).

However, there is still the issue of money that Bill Gates asserted. Hackers could use their skill to get a steady salary at a commercial firm if money is such a strong motivator (Lerner and Tirole 20). Yet DeMarco and Lister’s study found salary to be only weakly correlated to performance. This would indicate that money is not so strong an incentive as to actively discourage hackers from writing free software (47). Nor does it keep people from being productive on the job: Employees will work overtime to get important work done if they have to (ibid 43). It is the work itself that interests programmers, not the money. The corporate structure just gets in the way of their creative and productive work.

A more practical reason for a hacker to hack is to “scratch an itch.” If he has a problem with existing software, he can solve it by fixing it or writing his own version. The problem with conventional proprietary software is that it’s closed source: The hacker can’t access the code for modification. As the user changes and the world around him shifts, the software no longer “fits” very well (McCarthy 70). One of the inspirations for the open source movement was Stallman’s frustrations with a proprietary printer program that Xerox wouldn’t release the source code for (Lerner and Tirole 26). Apache, an open source web server that underpins much of the internet today, originated over a mailing list by developers who couldn’t add patches and improvements to an older program (ibid 13). Of course, “in many instances, solutions developed by particular users for individual problems have more general solutions for wide classes of users” (ibid 3). The motivations that drive a software developer lead to useful, quality work because that’s what he wants to produce. Open source does not provide overt extrinsic motivations or incentives, but instead steps back and lets hackers do what they do.

Perhaps it is now time to elaborate on open source itself. It has already been mentioned that open source is a cooperative effort to produce free software. A particular project is set up by one or more hackers wishing to share their efforts and produce something useful. Other members join because they want to help improve it as well. Communication is vital for this collaboration to work: Users who find problems (bugs) must report them so that developers can fix them (debugging). Developers submit their changes to fix bugs or add new features, and the community decides which patches are integrated into the next released version of the software. Some project communities vote on changes, while others rely on the original founders to make final decisions (Brand). This style of organization has evolved organically from the first hacker communities, so there is generally little extraneous structure. The community forms naturally as hackers are doing what they want to do, so its structure makes it easy for hackers to continue doing it.

Open source communities can be seen as gift cultures. Hackers can easily access everything they need, and the internet makes it easy to share their software creations. “This abundance creates a situation in which the only measure of… success is reputation among one’s peers” (Raymond 99). A hacker’s “gift” is a patch or other contribution. It’s relevancy to the community’s goals dictates how much respect it earns for its giver. The status of an individual within the community is determined by his skill and ability rather than social class or wealth, making open source meritocratic (or based on merit) (“Meritocracy”). Social standing is a strong motivation in its own right, but the simple feedback or peer-evaluation it gives hackers shapes their behavior even if they don’t play the “reputation game” (Raymond 102).

The peer-evaluation system is not only good for hackers, but for the software as well. “Continued devotion to hard, boring work (like debugging, or writing documentation) is more praiseworthy than cherrypicking the fun and easy hacks” (Raymond 117). Even though open source projects are volunteer efforts, the dirty work still gets done because hackers get rewarded for doing it. However, bragging about such work – or anything at all – is taboo. Seeking personal advantage at the expense of others weakens the collaborative power of the group (Lakhani and Wolf 5). The peer-evaluation system is disrupted when the quality of the gift doesn’t speak for itself (Raymond 109). The reputation game isn’t “won” – the respect given by other members of the community is meant to bolster a hacker’s self-esteem, not his ego. A hacker’s self-esteem is tied “strongly to the quality of the product” he produces (DeMarco and Lister 19), which is why peer-evaluation ensures quality by reassuring the hacker of his natural tendency to do well.

As a community grows, its members become more invested in the community’s well-being. Cooperation is most beneficial when it continues because it can “breed reciprocity and trust, to the benefit of all” (“Economics”). Giving away software for free is only a stretch of the imagination if there isn’t a promise of feedback and the hope that others will offer their help in return (Raymond 152). The common interest of the group is served if each individual submits to the will of the community rather than asserting his own needs. “If hackers were egotistical, rational actors with no social bindings, the collaboration would not work” (Brand). The community acts as a whole greater than the sum of its parts, with the teamwork allowing for greater productivity and greater enjoyment than the same hackers would get working separately (DeMarco and Lister 123).

Because each hacker is not acting as an individual but as a member of the group, a great number of people can be involved without a strict hierarchy. Linux is no exception: many large collaborative projects are emerging that lack managed hierarchies (Benkler 7). KDE is a graphical interface and software suite comparative to what most people interact with on Windows. Yet this impressive project is also be supported by open source collaboration without hierarchies (Brand). The reputation game does not systematically rank participants. It only recognizes those hackers who contributes most to the community. Turning around and using that power goes against the ego taboo, so leaders are forced to be humble and guide through their own contributions.

The fulfillment hackers get from being part of a successful project actually leads to its success. The creative self-expression of the hacker takes the form of software. Because his self-esteem is tied up in the quality of his work, he invests himself in his code. But “deep within, we want others to use our work and find it helpful” (Brooks 7). The peer-evaluation recognizes good work and puts it use. His self-esteem is now tied to the success of the project as a whole, because his own work is part of the greater software. Indeed, he has identified so much with the project that he and his team members have jelled to form a productive community. The community provides even greater fulfillment for the initial software creation, encouraging him to help meet the needs of the community – and both he and the community want the final product to be great.

It is useful to compare open source communities with those of the Troglodytes of the allegory by Baron de Montesquieu. These near-human creatures were originally completely self-interested, and not at all like the friendly hackers. They would lie and cheat, even kill each other, just to get the better land or the better wife (Montesquieu 1-2). However, this society destroyed itself because of the Troglodytes’ inability to cooperate in hard times. Those that did survive went on to construct a perfectly just and harmonious community. “They worked with equal solicitude in the common interest” (Montesquieu 3). The Troglodyte’s new community behaves much more like that of the hackers. The traditional software production is driven by self-interest and competition, while the open source haven has succeeded beyond all expectations. Both Troglodyte and open source communities are cooperative societies which take advantage of plentiful resources in their environments. As gift cultures, the contributions of members to community are valued above resource-hoarding and taking advantage of others: “Nature provided for their desires as abundantly as for their needs… They would give each other presents, and the giver always though that the advantage was his” (Montesquieu 4).

The mystery of open source has now been unveiled as a simple human community. Perhaps not so simple, but the trail leading from the initial question of why hackers volunteer to the final answer that their motivations for doing so also drive the success of open source has only been eight pages long. Hackers are intrinsically motivated to contribute: they love doing what they do because it’s challenging and creative work. Cooperation justifies the initial work, but also brings its own rewards. The community supports the hacker’s creations and inspire him to do more for the success of the project. Using the power of communication provided by the internet, hundreds of individuals come together to work towards a single goal, sharing resources and ideas. However, the similarities between open source communities and those of the good Troglodyte’s brings some doubt as to their future. In the end, the Troglodytes were so successful and numerous that they sought to crown one of their own as king. But the individual they asked to take power responded with despair.

“In your present state, without a ruler, it is necessary for you to be virtuous despite yourselves. Otherwise you would not continue to exist, and you would fall into the misfortunes of your ancestors… Would you want [a Troglodyte] to perform a virtuous action because I tell him to, when he would have it just the same without me, by natural inclination alone?” (Montesquieu 6)

Perhaps hackers will one day follower their leaders without question rather than with respect, or return to the salaried jobs of corporate firms. But as long as hackers love to hack, the exchange of ideas and cooperation of people seen in open source will survive.

Works Cited

• Benkler, Yochai. “Coase’s Penguin.” Yale Law Journal 112 (2002): n.pag.

• Brand, Andreas. Email Interview. By Tom Chance. “The Social Structure of Open Source Development.” News Forge. 1 Feb 2005. 14 May 2005 http://programming.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=05/01/25/1859253.

• Brooks, Frederick P., Jr. The Mythical Man-Month. Reading: Addison-Wesley, 1995.

• DeMarco, Tom and Timothy Lister. Peopleware. New York: Dorset House, 1987.

• “Economics of Sharing, The.” The Economist. 3 Feb 2005. 14 May 2005 http://www.economist.com/finance/displayStory.cfm?story_id=3623762.

• Lakhani, Karim R. and Robert G. Wolf. “Why Hackers Do What They Do.” Perspectives on Free and Open Source Software (2005): n.pag.

• Lerner, Josh and Jean Tirole. “The Simple Economics of Open Source.” Journal of Industrial Economics 52 (2002): 197-234.

• McCarthy, Jim. Dynamics of Software Development. Redmond: Microsoft Press, 1995.

• Montesquieu, Charles Louis de Socondat. Persian Letters. Bainbridge Island: Bainbridge Island School District, 1721.

• Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 1999.

Works Referenced

• DeMarco, Tom and Timothy Lister. Peopleware. New York: Dorset House, 1987.

• Lum, Rosalyn, Laurie O’Connell and Alexandra Weber Morales. “The Open Road: A History of Free Software.” Software Development Jun 2005: insert.

• “Meritocracy.” Wikipedia. 15 May 2005 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meritocracy.

• Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral and the Bazaar. Sebastopol: O’Reilly, 1999.

The purpose of Percy Shelley’s poem, Ozymandias, is to remind us of how transient human civilization is. No matter how vast and powerful our kingdoms, time and nature will ultimately take them away. It is a reaction to the Enlightenment, a time when men of reason proposed that human society is on an endless path of progress – always improving and perfecting itself. “The time will therefore come when the sun will shine only on free men who know no other master but their reason.” (Condorcet) Shelley and other Romanticists rebelled against the reasoned optimism of the Enlightenment using imagination and emotion. Ozymandias is a reflection of this argument, reflecting on the superiority of nature and the endurance of human emotion contrasted with the weakness and impermanence of civilization.

“My name is Ozymandias, king of kings: / Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!” (10-11) The words of this ancient lord speak to an empty desert, themselves the only remnants of his once-mighty empire. The irony is striking: Shelley creates a vivid image of the futility of human strivings against nature. Once this place was surely a great kingdom, stable and successful. But it fell like the other ancient centers of reason and knowledge, Greece and Rome. These temples of the Enlightenment were destroyed, and yet many philosophers still believed in conquering human savagery with civilization. Shelley embraces emotion instead: “…its sculptor well those passions read / Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things” (6-7). The emotion on the statue is the only thing that has endured the centuries – while the power, the ideas, and even the stones of Ozymandias have all turned to dust. Nature and emotion have conquered and outlasted his civilization, and there is no reason why they shouldn’t do the same for ours.

As the children of the Enlightenment, we know about Man’s desire to conquer Nature. In the last century, we have fought an uphill battle, often destroying and changing what we mean to harness – and today, we fear that may have actually been messing things up for ourselves all along. The planet Earth can get along fine without us, but we are dependent upon our Earth. Nature will endure when we do not, just as Ozymandias and his civilization passed into the desert sands. Civilizations have risen and fallen in the past, and if Condorcet had seen this, he might not have concluded that humanity could reach perfection through reason. Shelley understood the transience of civilization, and in the simple yet strong imagery of his poem, the only thing nature does not take is the emotion and the ironic message of Ozymandias, king of kings.

Although Boccaccio’s “Ser Ciappelletto” portrays a man who sins up until his dying breath, it is also an early Renaissance Humanist commentary on life. As Ser Ciappelletto blasphemes the Church by lying to one of its holiest friars, Boccaccio is also making a critique of the Church’s validity. When Ciappelletto dies, he has convinced the friar of his completely (and falsely) sinless nature and attains sainthood on earth. Yet his ultimate fate is unknown. Boccaccio intentionally left Heavenly judgment out to make a point: what matters is the here and now because God and the afterlife are beyond human comprehension.

Boccaccio paints Ser Ciappelletto as a rather amusing fellow who torments the Church, the government, and his fellow Italians. Yet he does this all to amuse himself, not because he is inherently evil. “He would have been greatly embarrassed if one of his legal deeds… were found to be anything other than manifestly false; he would have drawn up as many false documents as were requested of him without any fee, and done it more willingly than one who was paid enormous amounts of money.” His final act in life is to lie the holy friar, convincing the man of God of his purity and piety. Ciappelletto lives a lier and a thief, and dies a Christian and a saint. Obviously the Church is no better judge of this man than anyone else.

In his final act of deception, Ser Ciappelletto solves the dilemma of his caretakers and creates a persona who will inspire people for years to come. Although the fate of his immortal soul is unknown, the legacy he leaves behind in life is the focus of his story. His present relationship with God is what matters, not what happens after his death. A real confession of Ciappelletto’s sins would just condemn him further, and also cause problems for the two brothers and the friar. But as Ciappelletto himself posed the solution, “I have, while alive, done so many injuries to our good Lord, that to do Him one last injury at my death won’t really matter.” His life is the method by which he defines his relationship with God. What happens after our time is unknown, and so it should not be our focus in living.

In life, Ser Ciappelletto sinned; in death, he becomes a saint. Yet just as his sainthood is purely an earthly construct, so too is the entire Church according to Boccaccio. The holy friar does not have any divine powers to discern Ser Ciappelletto’s true nature, and thus is able to be tricked into giving him the highest praise. This goes to show that the Church is fallible – it has no special ability to understand God, and therefore the nature of God is unknown. The only thing a person can be sure of is his lifetime on earth. In one short tale, Boccaccio redefines the human relationship with the Church and the afterlife in a purely Humanist perspective.