2.2 KiB
Hacking
Hacking
He's a hacker! Oh no, the pirate's going to hack our computer! And our mobile phones! And our TV! Run for your lives! He'll use our credit cards to hack even more! He might even hack our fridge!
That's not a hacker. That's an evil person. Hackers are not evil. Hackers are curious people. The evil person described above can be called a cracker instead. Such a person can be said to crack computers and mobile phones, not hack them. Hacking is very different.
Hacking is the act of creating new ways to use objects with well-defined uses. It's about experimenting, being clever, and playing. Hacking does not have to result in something useful, though it sometimes does in the long run. It's about the present.
When you've hacked something, you've created a hack. It can happen spontaneously, or it can happen because you want it to happen.
Once, I was eating a pizza in a restaurant with a group of friends when one of my friends couldn't eat anymore of his hummus. I had one slice of pizza back, and he had a little hummus back. I realized then that I could combine the pizza and the hummus, and tada: I ate a hummus pizza slice (which was good, by the way); i created a hack.
Much more clever hacks have been created, but the hummus pizza example should serve as a simple example of what a real-life hack could be — a hack can be so many things.
Hacking is often associated with software development, because that's often about finding clever solutions and being open for new ways to do things.
"Just stop it already. You've lost."
One could argue that the hacking community should just accept that the media and the non-hacker part of the public have long ago changed the meaning of hacker to "person who breaks digital security", and that hackers should just find another word to describe themselves. But if we did that, all the history associated with hacking would fade as new generations came along.