Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham is a readable essay about hacking and how it is not computer science, but is akin to painting or writing. He concludes with:
Over and over we see the same pattern. A new medium appears, and people are so excited about it that they explore most of its possibilities in the first couple generations. Hacking seems to be in this phase now.
Painting was not, in Leonardo’s time, as cool as his work helped make it. How cool hacking turns out to be will depend on what we can do with this new medium.
Embedded in the essay is an idea about fame and open source hacking that needs some thought. My sense is that hacking is in the age of genius, while the arts Graham gives as examples were developed during an age where individual genius was not recognized as it is now. Hackers essentially want the recognition they think artists get for open source work even though our idea of genius is a product of a history of Western art culture. What if we reversed the theory and imagined computing culture, that downplays individual genius relative to other arts, as providing a paradigm back to the arts where the genius artist is no longer the norm?
This link came from Matt Patey.