This is probably as futile and misguided as Stallman's effort to get everyone to say "GNU/Linux". Once a word serves its functional purpose within a community it's going to be used to communicate whatever idea it communicates. Words are often used contrary to what their etymology and history would seem to imply. I don't use "hacker" to mean "intruder," but I'm not going to waste any effort "correcting" people who do.
I agree. I think the generally accepted meaning has evolved over time. Hacker, to most people, now means cracker/intruder.
Perhaps a more positive way to approach this is to popularise a different term for what we mean by hacker (tinkerer, maker). It's not admitting defeat by abandoning the original meaning - it's taking the path of least resistance and evolving with the language.
The thing is, a cracker/intruder is also most likely a hacker, in the more mild sense of the term. They wouldn't be able to crack/intrude without 'hacking' in order to have that ability/knowledge.
The problem is that people think of A when they read B, because to them, they don't understand, or care, enough about the history of word to properly use it.
When I was first learning about computing and networks (late 90's), I always knew "hackers" as part of the H/P/V/C/A scene (Hacking/Phreaking/Virus Writing/Cracking/Anarchy) as used in many of the zines, forums and IRC chans of the period.
However, over the years I've seen articles supporting multiple etymologies.
I think we're at a point where we're probably all at least a little right, not that it matters. It would just be useful when relating to the mainstream media and public if we could form some sort of consensus on the terminology.
I was at a start-up in the late 90s that refused to use the term everyone else used in their press releases, and they used "cracker" instead, and then the business withered up and turned into a zombie.
Sometimes you need to accept your losses and move on.
Earliest recorded usage of the term "hacker" in a technology context:
----
1963 The Tech (MIT student newspaper) 20 Nov. 1 Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. … The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. … Because of the “hacking,” the majority of the MIT phones are “trapped.”
Yep, sorry guys - I know I'll get crap for this, but:
The word is the clue as it implies 'invasive force'. Any other meaning is only going to be accepted when enough of you agree 'it is so'. The original meaning (and I've always known it as such, 30+ years) is perfectly outlined by the paragraph above. It does not refer to white-hat stuff.
The original word is 'hack':
cut with rough or heavy blows.hack off the dead branches
a rough cut, blow, or stroke.he was sure one of us was going to take a hack at him"
(in sports) a kick or hit inflicted on another player.a cut or gash.a tool for rough striking or cutting, e.g., a mattock or a miner's pick.
I'm going to catch shit for this. Can't we all just get along? :)
EDIT: Fine down-vote me you evil b'stards - b'stard is a person without married parents :)
You rightly should catch the said substance for this. It's a misuse of the etymology.
Hack does refer to cutting with rough or heavy blows. Centuries ago, "hackers" referred to people who made rough-shod furniture with an axe. That was a hack back then.
In WW2, "hackers" were mechanics in the US Navy who hacked off the broken parts of airplanes to weld together the working parts of broken planes. That was also a hack. The planes were referred to as "hack jobs."
History is littered with examples using exactly the meaning you cited that are quite the opposite of nefarious. The very essence of Maker culture is about the old definition of "hacker."
I'm pretty sure I read this complaint on Slashdot, circa 1997.
Despite what people claim, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. For example the movie "War Games"(1983)[1] uses the term Hacker to refer to someone who hacked into computer systems.
A word can have multiple connotations without causing problems.
I hope people get this already. Hacking is a skill set, and a general approach to doing things. As with everything, you can use it to do all sort of things, some of them less nice.
By the late 90s this is exactly how I understood the terms.
Even now I don't hear many people in the local tech community (Scotland) refer to hackers as we mean here (unless it's prefixed with something, for example "Python hacker").
I think we already have words for these people. Criminal and suspect cover the general case. To get more specific we have vandal, thief, industrial spy, stalker, fraudster, and so on. I guess there are some newish crimes - virus wrangler and DDoS participant? They're so different it's hard to make an umbrella term for them.
In some countries, e.g. Canada, you can get a serious Software Engineering degree that's right up there with mechanical engineering etc. In fact, you're not allowed to call yourself a software engineer without that degree.
"cracker" was invented as a derogatory neologism to attack one group of people that called themselves "hackers" by another group of people that called themselves "hackers".
In my experience, even those who use the term not in the 'Cracker' sense disagree on its meaning. Definitions range from 'elite programmer' to 'programmer who operates in a disorganised, haphazard manner'.
'Cracker' also has racial connotations in the US, doesn't it? Language is complicated.
Either resign to the fact, or simply come up with a better term to describe what a hacker is.
In fact, what is a hacker anyway, just a talented coder? What about hardware hackers? A maker? Someone technical, but concerned with beauty? What about jailbreakers, are they crackers?
I have seen the term "hacking" been used to describe using a device via its interface, as intended..
Starting my car with a key is not hacking, starting my neighbors car with his key is neither. Obtaining the key without consent, might be. But that again could in fact be social engineering.
In comparison, using another (master)key that happens to fit would be akin to "cracking". If one engineered the key himself, thàt (along with the required investigative research work) might be hacking.
Listen please: the original meaning of "cracker" is someone who defeats locally installed software protections through patching/modifying the compiled program code. "Cracker" as a term is historically unfit for describing online exploits. Look up "SKIDROW" or "Phrozen Crew" or "Razor 1911" for examples of groups that (at least originally) worked/works primarily as crackers.
Finding a word other than "cracker" to designate people using computers for illegal purposes would be a useful exercise. Otherwise a lot of entirely legitimate activity gets tarnished and if you describe yourself as "hacking" then ordinary folks get the wrong impression.
Rather make a petition to stop people with no real technological skillsets glorifying themselves as "hacker" every chance they get. Be it on HN, their own blogs or facebook.
Making wordpress themes isn't hacking, no matter how hard you want to ride the web 2.0 train.
I first heard of pg through a slashdot article on his book Hackers and Painters. I remember lots of people writing that that word "hacker" was utterly lost and should be retired. The mere existence of the petitioner in this article—Hacker Rank—a company that is taken seriously by the tech industry shows how wrong those commenters were. That the site I write this comment on—Hacker News—is so heavily trafficked by creative builders rather than malicious intruders is icing on the cake.
It's hard to change the meaning of a word, but in this one case a reclamation is well underway.
I think there's a bit of an attempt to retroactively broaden the historical scope of this specific usage of "hacker", though, which is part of the confusion. Until at least the mid/late-1980s, "hacker" in this sense was more or less local MIT slang, used at MIT itself and at some MIT-linked organizations (the FSF, Symbolics, Lucid, etc.). I don't believe it was in use by people doing similar things in other locations, without MIT ties. For example, nowadays people cite Woz and the Homebrew Computer Club as archetypical examples of the hacker ethos, but as far as I know, they didn't use the term themselves in that period to describe what the HCC was doing.
I don't argue that there are two meanings on the word, but the true definition as per Oxford dictionaries is clear that a hacker is a cracker, but there is another informal definition.
All I'm saying is that surely it's not only the media that need to change, but also all definitions in general?
A minority community can take ownership of a pejorative. A pejorative is often a word appropriated by a majority. Both of the previous sentences apply here.
Thanks for outright saying I'm was incorrect, really inspires confidence in one's self.
Thanks for shining some clarity on this for me. I was merely asking a question followed by a thought, I didn't claim to be correct. I was simply asking.
How to accomplish this: need some group to determine and call themselves 'hackers' and sue everyone for actually associating with crackers by calling them hackers. Hence it'd be politically incorrect to call them hackers. Done!
At first I thought this is the most pointless petition ever. But then I realised the whole point of it is to promote their website. It's kind of sad to see petitions being used in this way.
While we are at it, we can tell modern religious literalists that 'Baal' means Lord, and that El and YHVH are different Gods as well, and that all three once competed for followers.
Don't sweat it and let context guide you. It's not as if hackers are some kind of minority group that needs protection. Moniker, no moniker, who cares.
Hackers can be either white hats or black hats (or something in between: grey hats). The moral ambiguity is part of what makes the appellation interesting.
This whole attempt to make "cracker" happen feels like a bunch of people desperate to call themselves "Hackers" and feel cool, but without scaring off boring BigCorp employers.
Comments
This is probably as futile and misguided as Stallman's effort to get everyone to say "GNU/Linux". Once a word serves its functional purpose within a community it's going to be used to communicate whatever idea it communicates. Words are often used contrary to what their etymology and history would seem to imply. I don't use "hacker" to mean "intruder," but I'm not going to waste any effort "correcting" people who do.
I agree. I think the generally accepted meaning has evolved over time. Hacker, to most people, now means cracker/intruder.
Perhaps a more positive way to approach this is to popularise a different term for what we mean by hacker (tinkerer, maker). It's not admitting defeat by abandoning the original meaning - it's taking the path of least resistance and evolving with the language.
The thing is, a cracker/intruder is also most likely a hacker, in the more mild sense of the term. They wouldn't be able to crack/intrude without 'hacking' in order to have that ability/knowledge.
The problem is that people think of A when they read B, because to them, they don't understand, or care, enough about the history of word to properly use it.
Most crackers are script kiddies, using exploits or code developed by someone else. So most crackers are not hackers in the Stallman sense.
It started meaning that. http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/
When I was first learning about computing and networks (late 90's), I always knew "hackers" as part of the H/P/V/C/A scene (Hacking/Phreaking/Virus Writing/Cracking/Anarchy) as used in many of the zines, forums and IRC chans of the period.
However, over the years I've seen articles supporting multiple etymologies.
I think we're at a point where we're probably all at least a little right, not that it matters. It would just be useful when relating to the mainstream media and public if we could form some sort of consensus on the terminology.
I was at a start-up in the late 90s that refused to use the term everyone else used in their press releases, and they used "cracker" instead, and then the business withered up and turned into a zombie.
Sometimes you need to accept your losses and move on.
Earliest recorded usage of the term "hacker" in a technology context:
----
1963 The Tech (MIT student newspaper) 20 Nov. 1 Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. … The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. … Because of the “hacking,” the majority of the MIT phones are “trapped.”
---
(I wrote an article on this many years ago http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/)
Yep, sorry guys - I know I'll get crap for this, but:
The word is the clue as it implies 'invasive force'. Any other meaning is only going to be accepted when enough of you agree 'it is so'. The original meaning (and I've always known it as such, 30+ years) is perfectly outlined by the paragraph above. It does not refer to white-hat stuff.
The original word is 'hack':
cut with rough or heavy blows. hack off the dead branches
a rough cut, blow, or stroke. he was sure one of us was going to take a hack at him" (in sports) a kick or hit inflicted on another player. a cut or gash. a tool for rough striking or cutting, e.g., a mattock or a miner's pick.
I'm going to catch shit for this. Can't we all just get along? :)
EDIT: Fine down-vote me you evil b'stards - b'stard is a person without married parents :)
You rightly should catch the said substance for this. It's a misuse of the etymology.
Hack does refer to cutting with rough or heavy blows. Centuries ago, "hackers" referred to people who made rough-shod furniture with an axe. That was a hack back then.
In WW2, "hackers" were mechanics in the US Navy who hacked off the broken parts of airplanes to weld together the working parts of broken planes. That was also a hack. The planes were referred to as "hack jobs."
History is littered with examples using exactly the meaning you cited that are quite the opposite of nefarious. The very essence of Maker culture is about the old definition of "hacker."
O bugger... ok then, I give up :)
Actually, that definition matches the other usage, too: people force a system to do things it isn't supposed to do; they "hack" at it until it works.
(But I agree that "hacker" has meant invading systems as long as it has meant anything else)
Fair enough: It will ultimately depend on what the majority decide on. It's all just another perspective I guess.
I'm afraid that ship has sailed, returned, unloaded the cargo and then sent the crew home for hiatus.
Agreed - it's waaay too late to change this now.
I'm pretty sure I read this complaint on Slashdot, circa 1997.
Despite what people claim, it wasn't true then and it isn't true now. For example the movie "War Games"(1983)[1] uses the term Hacker to refer to someone who hacked into computer systems.
A word can have multiple connotations without causing problems.
[1]http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/WarGames
I hope people get this already. Hacking is a skill set, and a general approach to doing things. As with everything, you can use it to do all sort of things, some of them less nice.
Exactly what I was thinking: "People are still on about this? It's like late-90s Slashdot!"
I feel like this does a great job at exemplifying the futility of petitions on Change.org.
"Dear media, please stop using a word your readers understand, instead say a racial epithet that's been used for the last 140 years."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cracker_(pejorative)
I have an idea, let's use the term 'honkey', it even almost sounds like 'hacker'…
Back in the 90's and early 2000's this is what I thought 'Hacker' and 'Cracker' meant
Hacker - A person who circumvents a walled network.
Cracker - A person who circumvents a walled software.
By the late 90s this is exactly how I understood the terms.
Even now I don't hear many people in the local tech community (Scotland) refer to hackers as we mean here (unless it's prefixed with something, for example "Python hacker").
And so does everyone else over 30. You can't just take a word to mean something new and petition to have the old meaning 'removed'.
We'd have more luck just inventing and adopting a new word to replace hacker, any suggestions?
I think we already have words for these people. Criminal and suspect cover the general case. To get more specific we have vandal, thief, industrial spy, stalker, fraudster, and so on. I guess there are some newish crimes - virus wrangler and DDoS participant? They're so different it's hard to make an umbrella term for them.
Craftsman or Artisan strike me as a good place to start.
oh yes venerated software 'craftsmen' because we don't have enough ego as programmers.
In some countries, e.g. Canada, you can get a serious Software Engineering degree that's right up there with mechanical engineering etc. In fact, you're not allowed to call yourself a software engineer without that degree.
I always saw hacker as a computer security term (so did popular culture) and not a term for tinkering/making.
This community is using the wrong term not the media.
"cracker" was invented as a derogatory neologism to attack one group of people that called themselves "hackers" by another group of people that called themselves "hackers".
That ship sailed approximately with the first documented use of the word "hacker": http://imranontech.com/2008/04/01/the-origin-of-hacker/
This petition is bad and its creator should feel bad.
In my experience, even those who use the term not in the 'Cracker' sense disagree on its meaning. Definitions range from 'elite programmer' to 'programmer who operates in a disorganised, haphazard manner'.
'Cracker' also has racial connotations in the US, doesn't it? Language is complicated.
It's just not going to happen.
Either resign to the fact, or simply come up with a better term to describe what a hacker is.
In fact, what is a hacker anyway, just a talented coder? What about hardware hackers? A maker? Someone technical, but concerned with beauty? What about jailbreakers, are they crackers?
I'm afraid I'm just adding to the pile here, but still: this is complete nonsense.
Hacker is a word that always had several interpretations. And, in fact, the network intruder one is of the oldest.
In fact, cracking, in software, is a very specific thing: bypassing copyrights/copy protections/limitations.
If you don't like what Hacker has meant and still means, don't apply it to yourself.
Shouldn't this post title have a "(1998)" next to it?
We started using "intruder" instead of "hacker"/"cracker" at Rublon. It seems to work pretty well.
I usually refer to 'crackers' as 'black-hat hackers'
I have seen the term "hacking" been used to describe using a device via its interface, as intended..
Starting my car with a key is not hacking, starting my neighbors car with his key is neither. Obtaining the key without consent, might be. But that again could in fact be social engineering.
In comparison, using another (master)key that happens to fit would be akin to "cracking". If one engineered the key himself, thàt (along with the required investigative research work) might be hacking.
Listen please: the original meaning of "cracker" is someone who defeats locally installed software protections through patching/modifying the compiled program code. "Cracker" as a term is historically unfit for describing online exploits. Look up "SKIDROW" or "Phrozen Crew" or "Razor 1911" for examples of groups that (at least originally) worked/works primarily as crackers.
Finding a word other than "cracker" to designate people using computers for illegal purposes would be a useful exercise. Otherwise a lot of entirely legitimate activity gets tarnished and if you describe yourself as "hacking" then ordinary folks get the wrong impression.
Rather make a petition to stop people with no real technological skillsets glorifying themselves as "hacker" every chance they get. Be it on HN, their own blogs or facebook.
Making wordpress themes isn't hacking, no matter how hard you want to ride the web 2.0 train.
I first heard of pg through a slashdot article on his book Hackers and Painters. I remember lots of people writing that that word "hacker" was utterly lost and should be retired. The mere existence of the petitioner in this article—Hacker Rank—a company that is taken seriously by the tech industry shows how wrong those commenters were. That the site I write this comment on—Hacker News—is so heavily trafficked by creative builders rather than malicious intruders is icing on the cake.
It's hard to change the meaning of a word, but in this one case a reclamation is well underway.
Personally I would settle for them not referring to heartbleed as a virus..
Isn't the definition of hacker infact a cracker?
I don't think a community (not HN, just in general) can just coin a term and expect to change the definition for all.
This has been going on for tens of years. Hackers feel like the media has wrongly appropriated the word, but nothing has changed in the meantime.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28programmer_subculture...
I think there's a bit of an attempt to retroactively broaden the historical scope of this specific usage of "hacker", though, which is part of the confusion. Until at least the mid/late-1980s, "hacker" in this sense was more or less local MIT slang, used at MIT itself and at some MIT-linked organizations (the FSF, Symbolics, Lucid, etc.). I don't believe it was in use by people doing similar things in other locations, without MIT ties. For example, nowadays people cite Woz and the Homebrew Computer Club as archetypical examples of the hacker ethos, but as far as I know, they didn't use the term themselves in that period to describe what the HCC was doing.
I don't argue that there are two meanings on the word, but the true definition as per Oxford dictionaries is clear that a hacker is a cracker, but there is another informal definition.
All I'm saying is that surely it's not only the media that need to change, but also all definitions in general?
http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/hacker
A minority community can take ownership of a pejorative. A pejorative is often a word appropriated by a majority. Both of the previous sentences apply here.
And no, you are incorrect.
Thanks for outright saying I'm was incorrect, really inspires confidence in one's self.
Thanks for shining some clarity on this for me. I was merely asking a question followed by a thought, I didn't claim to be correct. I was simply asking.
Answering, that is what questions are for.
Not for everyone, and the one we advocate isn't new at all: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker_%28term%29
Cracker also has a racial definition.
Thing is that 'cracker' is already two things - a flat savoury biscuit, and something you pull at christmas. Hacker only has one popular meaning.
How to accomplish this: need some group to determine and call themselves 'hackers' and sue everyone for actually associating with crackers by calling them hackers. Hence it'd be politically incorrect to call them hackers. Done!
Am I the only one not concerned about a word having two (or more) connotations? It seems common in English...
Sometimes I say "painter" and I mean a guy who paints walls, and sometimes I mean a guy who paints pictures.
Whilst you're there, get them to stop using "cyber" too...
At first I thought this is the most pointless petition ever. But then I realised the whole point of it is to promote their website. It's kind of sad to see petitions being used in this way.
While we are at it, we can tell modern religious literalists that 'Baal' means Lord, and that El and YHVH are different Gods as well, and that all three once competed for followers.
Better to petition them to use the term "malicious hacker".
Don't sweat it and let context guide you. It's not as if hackers are some kind of minority group that needs protection. Moniker, no moniker, who cares.
I would like to sign a petition not to use 'Hacker' to hype basically anything. Shorter even banks will look for "Hacker" accountants.
How about just stop reading the Huffington Post if you don't like the way they write?
It's not just Huffington Post. There are more newspapers and publications added in the list.
I'd also like to petition SV people to stop using the term "growth hacker".
How do we call "people obsessed with how mainstream media represents them" ?
No. Own it. Hackers share many of the qualities and flaws. Get over it.
Fighting semantic drift is literally the hardest thing in the world.
Can we not just accept that "hacker" now has two meanings?
PLEASE HACK INTO THE ENEMY FIRST
More lost causes on Change.org
Change.org is one of the most accurate signals of "ineffective people".
Hackers can be either white hats or black hats (or something in between: grey hats). The moral ambiguity is part of what makes the appellation interesting.
This whole attempt to make "cracker" happen feels like a bunch of people desperate to call themselves "Hackers" and feel cool, but without scaring off boring BigCorp employers.