Cultural literacy for hackers

Not just for hackers, gamers and sci-fi fans as well. [Link]

I’ve written before on the hacker culture as a invisible college defined partly by a network of trust, gatekeepers, and certification authorities. Jay Maynard ask the next question: What are the non-technical things every hacker should know?

Jay wrote in email:

> It just struck me that this might be an interesting subject for
> exploration. It's pretty obvious that any hacker out there worthy of
> the name would know Monty Python and the Holy Grail backwards and
> forwards. The same goes for Airplane!, Blazing Saddles and Young
> Frankenstein, TRON and now TRON: Legacy, and such written works as
> TNHD and Bored of the Rings and CATB (whether on paper or on the Web
> isn't important), not to mention pretty much the entire Weird Al
> Yankovic corpus (but especially It's All About the Pentiums and White
> and Nerdy).
>
> But it goes beyond that. How many hackers wouldn't immediately place a
> soft voice saying "I want to boot some head too" and get a chuckle out
> of the thought? Or hear a comment about world domination and think of
> a white mouse with a big head and a dumb sidekick?
>
> Just what would you say is basic cultural literacy for a hacker? Not
> in the sense so much that a hacker would need to be familiar with the
> works in order to be a hacker, but rather that someone with the hacker
> mindset would be drawn to them innately?

I have a fondness for Tom Lehrer as well.