35 lines
4.3 KiB
HTML
35 lines
4.3 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>Physical Activity and Sports</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="appendixb.html" title="Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker"/><link rel="previous" href="other-interests.html" title="Other Interests"/><link rel="next" href="education.html" title="Education"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">Physical Activity and Sports</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="other-interests.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">Appendix B. A Portrait of J. Random Hacker</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="education.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><div class="sect1" lang="en"><div class="titlepage"><div><div><h2 class="title" style="clear: both"><a id="physical"/>Physical Activity and Sports</h2></div></div><div/></div><p>Many (perhaps even most) hackers don't follow or do sports at all and
|
||
are determinedly anti-physical. Among those who do, interest in spectator
|
||
sports is low to non-existent; sports are something one
|
||
<span class="emphasis"><em>does</em></span>, not something one watches on TV.</p><p>Further, hackers avoid most team sports like the plague. Volleyball was
|
||
long a notable exception, perhaps because it's non-contact and relatively
|
||
friendly; Ultimate Frisbee has become quite popular for similar reasons.
|
||
Hacker sports are almost always primarily self-competitive ones involving
|
||
concentration, stamina, and micromotor skills: martial arts, bicycling, auto
|
||
racing, kite flying, hiking, rock climbing, aviation, target-shooting,
|
||
sailing, caving, juggling, skiing, skating, skydiving, scuba diving. Hackers'
|
||
delight in techno-toys also tends to draw them towards hobbies with nifty
|
||
complicated equipment that they can tinker with.</p><p>The popularity of martial arts in the hacker culture deserves special
|
||
mention. Many observers have noted it, and the connection has grown
|
||
noticeably stronger over time. In the 1970s, many hackers admired martial
|
||
arts disciplines from a distance, sensing a compatible ideal in their
|
||
exaltation of skill through rigorous self-discipline and concentration. As
|
||
martial arts became increasingly mainstreamed in the U.S. and other western
|
||
countries, hackers moved from admiring to doing in large numbers. In 1997,
|
||
for example, your humble editor recalls sitting down with five strangers at
|
||
the first Perl conference and discovering that four of us were in active
|
||
training in some sort of martial art — and, what is more interesting,
|
||
nobody at the table found this high perecentage at all odd.</p><p>Today (2000), martial arts seems to have become firmly established as
|
||
the hacker exercise form of choice, and the martial-arts culture combining
|
||
skill-centered elitism with a willingness to let anybody join seems a stronger
|
||
parallel to hacker behavior than ever. Common usages in hacker slang
|
||
un-ironically analogize programming to kung fu (thus, one hears talk of
|
||
“<span class="quote">code-fu</span>” or in reference to specific skills like
|
||
“<span class="quote">HTML-fu</span>”). Albeit with slightly more irony, today's hackers
|
||
readily analogize assimilation into the hacker culture with the plot of a Jet
|
||
Li movie: the aspiring newbie studies with masters of the tradition, develops
|
||
his art through deep meditation, ventures forth to perform heroic feats of
|
||
hacking, and eventually becomes a master who trains the next generation of
|
||
newbies in the hacker way.</p></div><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="other-interests.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="appendixb.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="education.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">Other Interests </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Education</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
|