"Exceedingly well written and comprehensive." - Core77 

"Hacking is really just today's name for the personal creative spirit that has always underpinned human ingenuity," writes Scott Burnham, and throughout this essay he traces the evolution of hacking from the digital to the analogue world and shows how the resourceful spirit behind hacking is improving everything from design products to cities and public space.

The essay features insight Burnham gained from years spent researching and working with design and urban hacking projects around the world. From this observation he details the benefits a hacking ethos can bring to products, services and cities:

Hacking creates new engagements between the product and the consumer.

Hacking mandates relevance and necessity in design.

Hacking is resourceful.

Hacking creates abundance from limited resources.

Hacking finds the truth in systems.

The text closes with "14 Ways to Get Hacked", showing how product makers or service providers can build in ways to encourage a more playful and resourceful relationship with your offering.

"The stereotypical designer - passionately authentic, famously unbending and always in black - is newly vulnerable to the interference of amateurs. The hard-won tryst between designer, manufacturer and intellectual property rights, likewise, has few defenses against the open-source spirit and an internet wherein no secrets are hid. The brave ones embrace it. While cheerful design jam-sessions of professional and amateur go on in cities and design festivals all over the developed world, nothing changes in the favelas and rural villages where necessity has always been the mother of invention."  - Emily Campbell, Director of Design, RSA London