If you have any info/pointer you think it may (or may not) related, please do send them to me at arthit # gmail,com or just leave a comment below. Thank you.
The finished work will be published online under Creative Commons License, for the benefits of everyone.
ผมกำลังทำการบ้านอยู่ครับ จะทำเรื่องวัฒนธรรมแฮกเกอร์ในเมืองไทย ใครมีข้อมูลบอกมาเลยนะครับ ผมอาจจะขอสัมภาษณ์ด้วยใครอยู่ในยุคบีบีเอส ยุค ZzzThai, LTN, TLWG พวกนี้ เรื่อยมาจน LinuxTLE, ปลาดาวออฟฟิศ, OfficeTLE, มาถึง Blognone และ *Camp ต่าง ๆ ใครเคยเห็นงานทำนองนี้หรือที่เกี่ยวข้องที่ไหนก็แจ้งมาได้เลยครับ — และแน่นอนว่าถ้าเห็นว่ามีอะไรผิดหรือไม่น่าจะใช่ ก็ท้วงได้เลยนะครับ — ขอบคุณมาก ๆ (ส่งต้น ๆ เดือนตุลา)
Good news guys, I decided to do my term project on ‘hackerdom’ and hacker subculture in Thailand :)
So to speak, the definition of ‘hacker’ in this project goes wider, it could be a coder, a radiofreak or a hobbyist/professional playing on electronic sound toy ... if one hacks a thing for fun, she's a hacker.
At the first place, I dated back Thailand's hackerdom to around mid-1990s, where a group of Thai students/professionals in Japan started a ZzzThai (สื่อไทย) project to develop/fix Thai features in free softwares. Also a number of then NECTEC-employed (like P'Samphan and @theppitak) that actively contribute codes on Thai language processing — together with other hackers. As my current understanding, these activities later resolved into Thai Linux Working Group, in which still more or less active til today.
Anyway, eventually, @sikkha reminds me that things actually started, before the Internet time, since the BBS era. @kijjaz also agree on this, and make me realized that it's not just only programmers who were active in that old days, but also experimental-hobbyist musicians who play around midi/mod trackers (@kijjaz used to run music-computing-packed Wildanty BBS, while I used to run a short-live SmileSite, around 1994-1995, but the Thai BBS scene dates back further at least two years — no solid data at this point, yet .. used to blog a bit about this four years ago). On the coding sides, in this BBS glory days, I still remember how people exchange their Turbo Pascal codes with others. Codes from Microcomputer magazine's SoftMail also available for download in many sites (yes, via that Z-modem protocol, a lot faster than Green Bangkok WiFi today! :p).
So, if you know anything about Falcon, ManNET, Close Loop, @rma (of AR group), or any BBS. Or things about ZzzThai, Linux.Thai.Net, Thai Linux Working Group, or any circles you think it may related. Please contact me na krub :)
A reason that I write this in English is because I realized that hackerdom in Thailand does not solely consists of Thais, no doubt there should be foreigners participated. At least in this era of BarCamp, @luke_bkk and many others show the examples.
Hmm... will update more in progress na, cheers :)
technorati tags:
Thailand,
hackerdom
