What is a hacker?
to use the word “hacker” according to my official definition. Still, understanding the etymological history of the word “hacker” may help in understanding the current social situation. The concept of hacking entered the computer culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the 1960s. Popular opinion at MIT posited that there are two kinds of students, tools and hackers. A “tool” is someone who attends class regularly, is always to be found in the library when no class is meeting, and gets straight As. A “hacker” is the opposite: someone who never goes to class, who in fact sleeps all day, and who spends the night pursuing recreational activities rather than studying. There was thought to be no middle ground. What does this have to do with computers? Originally, nothing. But there are standards for success as a hacker, just as grades form a standard for success as a tool. The true hacker can’t just sit around all night; he must pursue some hobby with dedication and fl
A hacker is someone who thinks outside the box. It’s someone who discards conventional wisdom, and does something else instead. It’s someone who looks at the edge and wonders what’s beyond. It’s someone who sees a set of rules and wonders what happens if you don’t follow them. A hacker is someone who experiments with the limitations of systems for intellectual curiosity. I wrote that last sentence in the year 2000, in my book Secrets and Lies. And I’m sticking to that definition. This is what else I wrote in Secrets and Lies (pages 43-44): Hackers are as old as curiosity, although the term itself is modern. Galileo was a hacker. Mme. Curie was one, too. Aristotle wasn’t. (Aristotle had some theoretical proof that women had fewer teeth than men. A hacker would have simply counted his wife’s teeth. A good hacker would have counted his wife’s teeth without her knowing about it, while she was asleep. A good bad hacker might remove some of them, just to prove a point.) When I was in college
Many people who don’t know anything about hacking believe that computer criminals are hackers. Heck, that’s what news stories call computer criminals. See our news about busted “hackers” and you’ll see headlines such as (ouch) UK hacker loses extradition fight “Glasgow-born Gary McKinnon, of north London, is accused of gaining access to 97 US military and Nasa computers….” These reporters who call criminals “hackers” makes us real hackers angry. Eric Raymond, author of The New Hacker’s Dictionary, says, Real hackers call these people crackers and want nothing to do with them… being able to break security doesn t make you a hacker any more than being able to hot wire cars makes you an automotive engineer. Unfortunately, many journalists and writers have been fooled into using the word hacker to describe crackers; this irritates real hackers no end… The basic difference is, hackers build things; crackers break them. The Hacker Jargon File (Version 2.9.6, 16 August 1991), adds that
