Apr

25

The Hacker In All Of Us.

Posted by Christopher Waldrop

April 25, 2008 |

In an article in EWeek, Jim Rapoza offers a broader definition of the term “hacker”, saying, “That hacker could be you.” Condensing an idea he put forth in an essay for the book Jack Bauer for President: Terrorism and Politics in 24, he explains, “A pretty good definition of a hacker is someone who knows or learns how things work and is able to come up with creative solutions to tough problems.”

I like his definition much better than the one I got from Webster’s Dictionary, “one who illegally gains access to and sometimes tampers with information in a computer system esp. using a home computer”, which is the way I normally hear the term used, although it also means “one that handles green brick in ceramic manufacturing” or a cab driver. It’s funny, but I had an aunt who did ceramics and I never heard anyone call her a “hacker”, and I’ve never heard a cab driver called a “hacker” either. I haven’t tried to look up the etymology of “hacker” as a computing term, but if I had to make an educated guess I’d say, even though it’s a label some people wear with pride, it was probably originally pejorative, since it seems to suggest a certain amount of incompetence. Even though there’s a certain amount of sneakiness associated with hacking, it sounds like it originally meant someone who couldn’t even sneak into a computer system but had to hack their way in.

Following Rapoza’s definition I like to think what I just did there was etymological hacking. And he’s demonstrating one of the great things about language: its fluidity. He says that for most people in the computing industry the term “hacker” is “a bad word”, but he’s giving it a positive connotation. That’s a groovy thing, but it does raise the question, if we’re all hackers, what do we call a hacker?


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