Kids, Computers, and the Law

[Cadaverous Pallor]

Originally Posted by tikiboy

Hackers are just that: Hacks. Back in the day people broke into systems and wrote viruses to soothe their unaccomplished egos. Writing a computer virus requires very few smarts, but a lame-o is going to think he's cool or "smart." That's why everyone else calls them hackers.

Like any word, especially those that are in use for new technology-related phenomena, the definition of the word "hacker" has changed a lot over the years. From here, emphasis mine:

Regardless of the width or narrowness of the definition, most modern hackers trace the word back to MIT, where the term bubbled up as popular item of student jargon in the early 1950s. In 1990 the MIT Museum put together a journal documenting the hacking phenomenon. According to the journal, students who attended the institute during the fifties used the word "hack" the way a modern student might use the word "goof." Hanging a jalopy out a dormitory window was a "hack," but anything harsh or malicious--e.g., egging a rival dorm's windows or defacing a campus statue--fell outside the bounds. Implicit within the definition of "hack" was a spirit of harmless, creative fun.

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As the 1950s progressed, the word "hack" acquired a sharper, more rebellious edge. The MIT of the 1950s was overly competitive, and hacking emerged as both a reaction to and extension of that competitive culture. Goofs and pranks suddenly became a way to blow off steam, thumb one's nose at campus administration, and indulge creative thinking and behavior stifled by the Institute's rigorous undergraduate curriculum.

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The combined emphasis on creative play and restriction-free exploration would serve as the basis for the future mutations of the hacking term. The first self-described computer hackers of the 1960s MIT campus originated from a late 1950s student group called the Tech Model Railroad Club. A tight clique within the club was the Signals and Power (S&P) Committee--the group behind the railroad club's electrical circuitry system. The system was a sophisticated assortment of relays and switches similar to the kind that controlled the local campus phone system. To control it, a member of the group simply dialed in commands via a connected phone and watched the trains do his bidding.

The nascent electrical engineers responsible for building and maintaining this system saw their activity as similar in spirit to phone hacking. Adopting the hacking term, they began refining it even further. From the S&P hacker point of view, using one less relay to operate a particular stretch of track meant having one more relay for future play. Hacking subtly shifted from a synonym for idle play to a synonym for idle play that improved the overall performance or efficiency of the club's railroad system at the same time. Soon S&P committee members proudly referred to the entire activity of improving and reshaping the track's underlying circuitry as "hacking" and to the people who did it as "hackers."

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The wide-open realm of computer programming would encourage yet another mutation in etymology. "To hack" no longer meant soldering unusual looking circuits, but cobbling together software programs with little regard to "official" methods or software-writing procedures. It also meant improving the efficiency and speed of already-existing programs that tended to hog up machine resources. True to the word's roots, it also meant writing programs that served no other purpose than to amuse or entertain.

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A classic example of this expanded hacking definition is the game Spacewar, the first interactive video game. Developed by MIT hackers in the early 1960s, Spacewar had all the traditional hacking definitions: it was goofy and random, serving little useful purpose other than providing a nightly distraction for the dozen or so hackers who delighted in playing it. From a software perspective, however, it was a monumental testament to innovation of programming skill. It was also completely free. Because hackers had built it for fun, they saw no reason to guard their creation, sharing it extensively with other programmers. By the end of the 1960s, Spacewar had become a favorite diversion for mainframe programmers around the world.

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By the mid to late 1970s, the term "hacker" had acquired elite connotations. In a general sense, a computer hacker was any person who wrote software code for the sake of writing software code. In the particular sense, however, it was a testament to programming skill. Like the term "artist," the meaning carried tribal overtones. To describe a fellow programmer as hacker was a sign of respect.

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As younger programmers began employing their computer skills to harmful ends-creating and disseminating computer viruses, breaking into military computer systems, deliberately causing machines such as MIT Oz, a popular ARPAnet gateway, to crash--the term "hacker" acquired a punk, nihilistic edge. When police and businesses began tracing computer-related crimes back to a few renegade programmers who cited convenient portions of the hacking ethic in defense of their activities, the word "hacker" began appearing in newspapers and magazine stories in a negative light. Although books like Hackers did much to document the original spirit of exploration that gave rise to the hacking culture, for most news reporters, "computer hacker" became a synonym for "electronic burglar."

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Although hackers have railed against this perceived misusage for nearly two decades, the term's rebellious connotations dating back to the 1950s make it hard to discern the 15-year-old writing software programs that circumvent modern encryption programs from the 1960s college student, picking locks and battering down doors to gain access to the lone, office computer terminal. One person's creative subversion of authority is another person's security headache, after all.

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This central taboo against maliciousness remains the primary cultural link between the notion of hacking in the early 21st century and hacking in the 1950s. It is important to note that, as the idea of computer hacking has evolved over the last four decades, the original notion of hacking--i.e., performing pranks or exploring underground tunnels-remains intact.

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Once a vague item of obscure student jargon, the word "hacker" has become a linguistic billiard ball, subject to political spin and ethical nuances. Perhaps this is why so many hackers and journalists enjoy using it. Where that ball bounces next, however, is anybody's guess.

Sorry for the huge post. I just read a book about American English, so this entymology question caught my eye.