The word "hacker" derives from the seventeenth century word of a
"lusty laborer" who harvested fields by dogged and rough swings of his
hoe. Although the idea of "hacking" has existed long before the term
"hacker"—
with the most notable example of Lightning Ellsworth, it
was not a word that the first programmers used to describe themselves.
In fact, many of the first programmers were from engineering or physics
backgrounds.
| “ |
"But from about 1945 onward (and especially
during the creation of the first ENIAC computer) some programmers
realized that their expertise in computer software and technology had
evolved not just into a profession, but into a passion" (46).[1] |
” |
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There was a growing awareness of a style of programming different from the cut and dried methods employed at first,
[11][12]
but it was not until the 1960s that the term hackers began to be used
to describe proficient computer programmers. Therefore, the fundamental
characteristic that links all who identify themselves as hackers are
ones who enjoy "…the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and
circumventing limitations of programming systems and who tries to
extend their capabilities" (47).
[1]
With this definition in mind, it can be clear where the negative
implications of the word "hacker" and the subculture of "hackers" came
from.
Some common nicknames among this culture include "crackers" who are
unskilled thieves who mainly rely on luck. Others include "phreak"—
which refers to a type of skilled
crackers and "warez d00dz"—
which is a kind of cracker that acquires reproductions of copyrighted
software. Within all hackers are tiers of hackers such as the "samurai"
who are hackers that hire themselves out for legal electronic locksmith
work. Furthermore, there are other hackers that are hired to test
security which are called "sneakers" or "tiger teams".
Before communications between computers and computer users were as
networked
as they are now, there were multiple independent and parallel hacker
subcultures, often unaware or only partially aware of each other's
existence. All of these had certain important traits in common:
- Creating software and sharing it with each other
- Placing a high value on freedom of inquiry
- Hostility to secrecy
- Information-sharing as both an ideal and a practical strategy
- Upholding the right to fork
- Emphasis on rationality
- Distaste for authority
- Playful cleverness, taking the serious humorously and humor seriously
These sorts of subcultures were commonly found at
academic settings such as
college campuses. The
MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the
University of California, Berkeley and
Carnegie Mellon University were particularly well-known hotbeds of early hacker culture. They evolved in parallel, and largely unconsciously, until the
Internet, where a legendary
PDP-10 machine at MIT, called AI, that was running
ITS, provided an early meeting point of the hacker community. This and other developments such as the rise of the
free software movement and
community
drew together a critically large population and encouraged the spread
of a conscious, common, and systematic ethos. Symptomatic of this
evolution were an increasing adoption of
common slang
and a shared view of history, similar to the way in which other
occupational groups have professionalized themselves but without the
formal credentialing process characteristic of most professional groups.
[citation needed]
Over time, the academic hacker subculture has tended to become more
conscious, more cohesive, and better organized. The most important
consciousness-raising moments have included the composition of the first
Jargon File in 1973, the promulgation of the
GNU Manifesto in 1985, and the publication of
Eric Raymond's
The Cathedral and the Bazaar in 1997. Correlated with this has been the gradual recognition of a set of shared culture heroes, including:
Bill Joy,
Donald Knuth,
Dennis Ritchie,
Paul Graham,
Alan Kay,
Ken Thompson,
Richard M. Stallman,
Linus Torvalds,
Larry Wall, and
Guido Van Rossum.
The concentration of academic hacker subculture has paralleled and
partly been driven by the commoditization of computer and networking
technology, and has in turn accelerated that process. In 1975, hackerdom
was scattered across several different families of
operating systems and disparate networks; today it is largely a
Unix and
TCP/IP phenomenon, and is concentrated around various
operating systems based on
free software and
open-source software development.
