In the context I was taught power had that very specific meaning. In this specific meaning money isn't power (though it can buy it), and money isn't prestige (though it can buy that too, see billg). In this definition, Bush has lots of power, and almost no prestige. Prestige on the order that Djikstra, Knuth, Turing, etc. have tends to last much longer than the people who earned it. Money and Power have almost no meaning beyond your lifetime.
If you follow the narrow definitions of the course, things tend to fall in place fairly cleanly.
One of the things that makes me wary of this model is that you can buy one for another. To be truly elemental of what people want you wouldn't be able to buy one for the other. You can't exchange lead for gold no matter how much lead you throw at the problem. This leads to confusion about what is what.
If you can buy power with money doesn't that make them interchangeable? Well yes, but that's not the point. Well what's the point? People tend to crave power money and prestige. But can't you buy power with money? ... And the cyclical argument continues :)
Well, that's just it. The kind of power that I think hackers crave is the kind that you can't buy with money.
Even if you had billions of dollars to throw at the problem, you could never be as relevant a figure in shaping the face of technology as Turing or von Neuman were. They created the ideas that are at the very core of so much that we do. You can't invent something again, and money isn't the tool you use to invent stuff :)
The shallow, transitory sort of power certainly can be bought. You can use money to make people do things. But you can't think with money, so it doesn't give you the power to have powerful thoughts, and THAT'S what changes the world.
That kind of power can obviously be turned into money, though.
If you follow the narrow definitions of the course, things tend to fall in place fairly cleanly.
One of the things that makes me wary of this model is that you can buy one for another. To be truly elemental of what people want you wouldn't be able to buy one for the other. You can't exchange lead for gold no matter how much lead you throw at the problem. This leads to confusion about what is what.
If you can buy power with money doesn't that make them interchangeable? Well yes, but that's not the point. Well what's the point? People tend to crave power money and prestige. But can't you buy power with money? ... And the cyclical argument continues :)