WHAT ARE........ AND WHERE DID THEY COME FROM?? Hayden "Haydz" JohnstonThe FolkloreDespite the misconceptions, hackers aren’t evil at all. Thanks to Hollywood, and myth, the term ‘hacker’ has led the public to believe that these people are criminals. In fact, they are are not even close. The computer world has a name for the men and women who use their computer skills to crack codes, defy laws, and steal, and they are called ‘crackers’. You see, the terms are quite appropriate really; the act of hacking is labour intensive, but cracking, well...have you ever cracked an egg? Lazy and incompetent is the way hacker’s view their cracker cousins. Hacker’s have helped to build what is now the Internet, and the crackers have managed to help corrupt it.
Hacker HistoryThe first hackers were called ‘real programmers.’ Most of them were engineers with backgrounds in physics, and the very best ones at that. Today we would call them ‘geeks’. The early pioneers were dominant forces in helping to advance computer technologies and languages. These men and women were working on such material as the outdated FORTRAN language, and did so starting from the end of WW II. It wasn’t until 1961 that ‘hackerdom’ truly took flight. Students at MIT adopted the PDP-1, and became the first institution to take interest in the coming technology of computers. Being the first place to coin the term ‘hacker’, MIT led the way in the hacker community, and became the leading centre for artificial intelligence, thus influencing the development of ARPANET, the first high speed, transcontinental network of computers.Constructed by the United States defence department, ARPANET was a digital communications experiment. ARPANET brought hacker’s together from all over the United States, and it became the first main resource for hackerdom. The main people in the hacker community were students, and oddly enough, not the government. By being part of this hacker culture, the students at major universities helped to advance the World Wide Web as we have come to know it today, and did so through the use of cheap timesharing. Hackers continued to use new networking programs such as UNIX in the early 1970’s. UNIX, because of its portability--compared to ARPANET--became the dominant networking tool for hackers throughout America's universities (where most hackers were), and another hacker culture was formed around the UNIX operating system. In the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, more new technologies were developed by, and for hackers. USENET groups, well known on today’s Internet, and the personal computer (Apple-BASIC) emerged, and helped to forge the hacker’s paradise. During this time, the philosophy of the hacker remained true to getting the most out of the software, and using tool-building challenges in order to do it. In the 1990’s, with personal computers becoming more popular, Intel, a chip manufacturing company, came out with its 386 chip. Now it was possible for the hacker to have his domain at home, rather than in a lab, and best of all the new technology was affordable. When many new UNIX versions were released for free in 1994, the hackerworld became primarily focussed on using that operating system once more. Since the recent mainstreaming of the Internet, hackers have become more respectable in the public eye, but they have also gained much criticism from government. The hackers are very much against censorship, and decency laws. (See the Hacker’s Ethic below).The government should re-evaluate the difference between hackers and crackers to see who is the real problem. Nevertheless, with the growth of an Internet audience, and it’s infringement as a culture, up and coming youth will be very powerful in the future of hackerdom.
A True Hacker.....To find the true meaning of ‘hacker’, one would probably have too look it up in the "Jargon File" (reference handbook of terminology that pertains to all aspects of hackerdom). If you can easily adapt to different types of problems, take joy in solving them, and don’t get easily frustrated, then you might want to be a hacker. The term ‘hacker’ originated with a group that worked on the first digital experiment--ARPANET. These creators formed a culture of excellent programmers, and experienced networkers.Hackers deal primarily with software building, and they have a certain cultural attitude. Hackers believe that to be a good hacker one must work alone. Keeping a clear mind-set, and being patient are both keys in being a successful hacker. A hacker has to be motivated. Seeing as software is growing at an astronomical rate, the modern hacker has loads of work ahead of him. Two brains are better than one, and this is true in being a successful hacker. It is important for a hacker to join forces with a few other hackers, in order to gain an edge on thousands of ‘wannabe’ hackers. The hacker makes fun of what he does, and if he doesn't, then he shouldn’t be a hacker. Hackers need freedom; therefore, censorship, secrecy and banning only slow him from completing a project. They are anti-authoritarian. Hacker's Ethic-Access to computers should be unlimited and total.
Links to the World of Hacking and Crackingwww.hackershomepage.com/index.html: A few things you may need to start hacking: FIND-ORDER'em here.hackers.com: A place hackers call home The CRACKER magazine: Hacked sights and more..... FUZZY LOGIC: Matthew Friedman's book online--Great Info!
 Any questions? Email me! |
I, Haydz, am not responsible for what you see, or read on these websites!!