Hacker ethic and the Real World

About Wines and Hackers: P2P Foundation Blog discovered recently that the open business model is more usual in the traditional businesses than it is usually thought. Stormhoek is a South African winery that self discovered that their creative and productive processes followed the culture of hacking. In fact many winemakers have followed the hacker ethic from a long time ago although they did not use this term:

We think that the wine business is ripe for hacking.

Lots of people think of hacking in the illicit, sub-culture sense, but in the legitimate world of hacking, those folks are referred to as “Crackers”. Hacking is simply about creating innovative solutions.

Copy and remix is one of the main keys to create original wines:

Hugh pointed out to us a year ago that using Aussie and Kiwi tech to make Sauvignon Blanc in South Africa, was a hacker move. We were not the first to do this sort of thing, but that just means that there is a community of hackers in the wine business and we believe that it is these guys who move the industry forward.

We think that the recent award that we won for the best Pinotage produced in South Africa was based upon a production ethos that hacked some more traditional production techniques. Freshness of course, in a world where older is considered better, is a bit of a hacker approach.

A good hacker could get a great wine from regular grapes; however a bad winemaker (using a closed code?) could spoil a great harvest:

Wine is defined by historical paradigms and perpetuation of old beliefs: Place defining wine instead of a certain ethos of production that actually makes the difference.

Many people think that terroir defines a wine, but put the wrong winemakers, procedure or equipment into great terroir, and then terroir matters little. However, great technique can take the mundane and make it special. We see that with hacker driven producers like Andy Quady, making great wine in the heart of a commodity grape growing area. Randall Graham has done the same thing… created great products from mundane sources. How often has a great winemaker shown the potential of a hitherto under estimated area?

Probably these new hackers of the old economy could not provide new insights to the “Internet crowd”, but a real social change will be possible only if the hacker ethic extends to the real world.