Unlike software, the basic language of hardware -- physics -- has not changed since the beginning of time as we know it.The notion that “hardware is hard” is more a func-
tion of society’s changing mores around intellectual freedom, ownership norms, and economic values. During the dot-com boom of the 90’s, the best and brightest shelved their soldering irons in favor of PHP and CSS.The West largely shed its electronics manufacturing base to Asia, while lobbyists pushed laws that criminalized exploration and reinforced IP monopolies. Now, we walk astonished through the streets of Shenzhen and marvel at their magical supply chain. Ironically, nothing fundamental has changed about hardware in the past 30 years -- we’re still building CPUs using CMOS, systems using copper on FR-4, exchanging data on the same wavelengths, albeit with better modula- tion and a whole lot more patents.What we’ve forgotten isn’t hardware -- what we’ve forgotten is what it’s like to have the freedom to explore and innovate in hardware. If we forget the origins of the hacker ethos; if we don’t ght to bring back these freedoms: we ultimately risk surrendering control over the very hardware that runs our daily lives.
