Hackers' disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO talking corporate newspeak, but they also laugh at someone who says a problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other.

The next generation of technology is almost always built by outsiders poking at current technology. In 1977, IBM had a team working on the next business computer—meanwhile two long-haired Steves in a Los Altos garage were actually building it. Multics begat Unix the same way.

Intellectual property laws now criminalize taking things apart to see how they work. 'How are we to develop new technology if we can't study current technology to figure out how to improve it?'

When the FBI investigated early computer break-ins, their standard motive list—drugs, money, sex, revenge—didn't include intellectual curiosity. The concept seemed foreign to them. Authorities systematically misread curiosity-driven rule-breaking.

Hackers are smart-alecks: 'If we had a national holiday, it would be April 1st.' The same word covers brilliant and horribly cheesy solutions, and you're not always sure which you've made—but if it has the right sort of wrongness, that's a promising sign.

There's a Laffer curve for government power. Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be a mistake—so it's stupid to run the experiment.

Hackers sense encroaching totalitarianism the way animals sense an approaching thunderstorm. Spying doesn't literally make programmers write worse code; it just leads to a world in which bad ideas win.

Florence is famous because in 1450 it was New York—filled with turbulent, ambitious people. Silicon Valley is in America, not France or Germany or Japan, because America remains 'a home not just for the smart, but for smart-alecks.'