My friend and colleague Alan Freedman, author of the distinguished Computer Desktop Encyclopedia, defines hacker as follows in Version 22.4: "Hacker: A person who writes programs in assembly language or in system-level languages, such as C. The term often refers to any programmer, but its true meaning is someone with a strong technical background who is "hacking away" at the bits and bytes. The association is understandable. Hackers have a bad name During the 1990s, the term "hacker" became synonymous with "cracker," which is a person who performs some form of computer sabotage.
In order to be an effective cracker, you had to be a good hacker, thus the terms got intertwined, and hacker won out in the popular press. Today, a lot of malicious acts are performed by people with limited knowledge who gain unauthorized entrance into computers to steal data or perform mischief (see script kiddie)." "HACKERS ARE PEOPLE TOO," a 2008 documentary directed by Ashley Schwartau and produced by Winn Schwartau, is a refreshing look at intelligent, healthy, original people who are far from the twisted misfits portrayed in the notorious 1992 propaganda film "Unauthorized Access" by Annaliza Savage. Why criminal hackers must not be rewarded However, sometimes, hackers are not even worthy of the original meaning of the term. It's a counterblow against the unfortunate hijacking of the term "hacker" by an uninformed press over the last 30 years. Yes, that exists, and yes, it's out there, but people in this community who call themselves hackers are incredibly talented people who are independent thinkers, who come up with incredibly creative and innovative ways of solving problems that other people just don't think of solving in a certain way. Steven Levy tried his best to fight the misuse of the term in his entertaining and informative book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (Penguin, Updated edition, Jan. 2, 2001; ISBN 978-0141000510; AMAZON). The film opens with some authentic perspectives from several simpatico non-criminal hackers on their enthusiasm for learning and tinkering: "When you think of hackers, forget the criminal aspect of it.
We are an incredibly creative… intuitive bunch; we latch onto technology and find new ways of using it and have been doing this … for fifty years." – Nick Farr, Co-Founder, Hacker Foundation. "A hacker is someone who wants to know how things work, take them apart, look at the components, see if there's a way to make them better, and put it back together and share that information openly without motivation of profit or fame or anything like that." – Scott Davidson, security professional "For any individual item… [or] raw material that can be forged into a product, there is the expected uses of it and then there is other. They see a fork and they go, 'Aha! Most people look at the expected uses. This is an object that has one purpose: to eat food.' And a hacker looks at the fork and says, 'Aha! Aha! This is metal: it will conduct electricity.
This has sharp points: it can make holes in clay for … making a sculpture." – Dan Kaminsky, penetration tester. As Kaminsky says, labeling an object by its primary function should not stop us from recognizing its manifold reality. I was particularly struck by Davidson's comment, since I've been strongly influenced by the work of Alfred Korzybski on his General Semantics since I was 13 years old (believe me, it didn't get me any dates in high school). One of the most important principles of General Semantics is often summarized by the aphorism "The map is not the territory" which is taken to mean that symbols are abstractions, not reality. Good problem-solvers – hackers in the context of this discussion – are good at seeing novel uses for all manner of tools. I loved it!
Ashley Schwartau's movie really moved me. On a personal note, I started programming in assembler using an ancient teach-yourself textbook in 1965 and quickly moved on to FORTRAN IV G at McGill University (whew!). But I still used assembler coding to program HP65 programmable calculator, which had no alphabetical characters on its display. That's hacking. To create my own space-war game, complete with limited orbital and ballistic calculations, I turned the device upside down to interpret the reversed numerals as a limited set of alphanumerics for status reports. In 1980, while being trained on HP's VPLUS/3000 forms-design software, I realized that the software's parser (the "MATCH" function and its wild cards) allowed one to branch from one form to another by parsing a user's inputs.
As a result of that insight, HP sent me to its Cupertino facilities on a six-month research assignment during which I worked with HP programmer Simon Cintz to create a SYSDUMP training simulation – HP's first computer-based training. In other words, the software was not simply a "forms-design package" as it was labeled: it could justifiably be called a programming language. And that's hacking! The documentary will show youngsters that non-criminal hackers are not sociopathic law-breakers – they're often immensely likeable people with tremendously creative intelligence and originality. So as a proud hacker – but never a criminal – let me urge you to enjoy the Schwartau's charming film, which can be used in schools to fight propaganda from criminal hackers and their sympathizers. Good one, Ashley & Winn! * * * For more materials you can give to children and teachers to oppose hackers, see the Ethics section of my Web site.
For interviews with Ashley Schwartau in which she talks about her motivations for making the documentary, the process, and the response, see:
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