Himanen’s works have been translated into 20 languages.
The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age has been compared to Max Weber’s The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Manuel Castells and others. Castells also writes: “Pekka Himanen's theory of the hacker culture as the spirit of informationalism is a fundamental breakthrough in the discovery of the world unfolding in the uncertain dawn of the third millennium.”
Himanen’s writings and research has been published by the world’s leading academic publishers, such as Oxford University Press. The most recent research publication is the volume The Aftermath: The Cultures of the Economic Crisis (Oxford University Press, 2012), including his article. Anthony Giddens has commented on this work: “This book marks a breakthrough.”
Himanen is one of the internationally most cited researchers in his field: his international works have been cited more than 2000 times (cf. where you can check any researcher’s number of international citations).
Himanen seeks to approach his topics in a more synthetic way, in a manner in which the research work on the philosophy of the information age can also be applied to the actual advancement of his philosophical goal: a dignified life. For this reason, in addition to his research work, he has also been broadly in direct dialog with different sectors of society: from policy-makers to the general public, some examples of such wider outreach being his articles for publications like the TIME Magazine and The Financial Times.
Current main positions: