Tonight, I have been working on this paper that among other things looks at the variegated moral spaces within the sphere of hacking in part to challenge the supposed notion of a unitary hacker culture or cultural sphere. As I finished for the night, I went to the kitchen to find my roommate munching on what are probably my third favorite snack food: Tortilla Corn Chips.

You can find TC nearly any day of the year in my house and there are various brands to satisfy the particular tastes of different roommates. And you know, I like them all but it struck me tonight that though tortilla chips are for the most part “the same”, they can taste quite different just depending on the thickness of the cut of the chip and the degree of salting. You look at the ingredients of like 2-3 bags and they will all say corn flour, salt, and vegetable oil yet the outcome can be so profoundly different at least having to do with the subtleties of the taste bud…. Made me think of my paper on hackers although I wish I could transfer the clarity of that sameness yet difference of the tortilla chip to the domain of hacking…