Books reviewed:
Title: Adaptation: A Hacker Mind to Solve Tricky and Complex Problems
Author: (Brazil) Paolo · Savajit
Translators: Zhang Wenting, Tong Jie
Publisher: CITIC Publishing Group
Publication date: July 2024
Paul · Savagette, a Brazil scholar and associate professor at the Department of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and the Saïd Business School in United Kingdom, describes four common workarounds involved in hacking in his book Flexibility: Hacking Thinking for Flexible Solving of Difficult and Complex Problems.
One of them is called borrowing the east wind. United Kingdom couple Jane · Berry and Simon · Berry found that Coca-Cola was relatively easy to buy in rural Zambia, but it was difficult to buy cheap over-the-counter drugs for diarrhoea and other diseases. Traditionally, this has required the creation of a channel dedicated to the sale of drugs and responsible for quality control, but this is difficult to achieve for African countries such as Zambia. The couple came up with the idea of inserting a simple package containing a drug for treating diarrhea in children between the bottles of the Coca-Cola crate, so that the laxative could be "hitchhiked" on Coca-Cola's distribution network.
Many companies will borrow the way of free riding and hitchhiking for marketing and advertising. Of course, this will also lead to corresponding controversies. Some enterprises rub hot spots, rub off on other people's traffic, and even affect the legitimate rights and interests of other enterprises and individuals.
However, this does not negate the effectiveness of using Dongfeng as an alternative, and the key is to define the boundaries of rights and behaviors.
The second is to find loopholes. This is not to encourage people to break the law, the rules, or to encourage illegal behavior. However, there are indeed inconsistencies in the rules in the world due to political, legal, cultural and other factors. As an example, in many countries, abortions are not even allowed for pregnant women, so many people risk unsafe abortions. In this case, there is a practice of helping pregnant women to have a safe abortion: buy a ship from a country that allows abortion, sail to some European and American countries where abortion is not permitted, pick up the pregnant woman, and then perform a safe abortion on the high seas with surgery or medicine. Although this is highly controversial, it does reduce the number of maternal deaths and severe infections and disability caused by unsafe abortions.
Similarly, because countries such as the United States have set the intellectual property rights of academic papers as private goods of books, journal publishers and information service providers, this makes it impossible for scholars and students in many other countries to obtain relevant academic papers and other information. For this reason, some hackers have devised mechanisms to promote the free sharing of information such as academic papers, that is, to encourage authors of academic papers to provide pre-published versions of their papers, thereby bypassing rights restrictions.
The third is a roundabout war. In many cases, scientists and inventors are very good at roundabout warfare, that is, making deviant innovations, trying beyond the established academic procedures and scientific requirements.
Interestingly, the book "Flexibility: Hacking Thinking to Solve Thorny and Complex Problems Flexibly Solve Problems" tells the roundabout ways in which some social groups in India reduce open urination on the streets. That is, on the sides of the streets of cities across India, tiles with the impression of religious gods are pasted.
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This article was first published in "Jialing Bridge Crossing"
Open urination is rampant in India, how to break the law without using harsh punishment?