Ask Slashdot: Another Word for "Hacker"?

mhiller asks this interesting question: "When those of us who code refer to ourselves as 'hackers' in mixed company, we always have to explain exactly what we mean by that - that we're not trying to crack into NORAD computers with our machines or anything else like that. Experience has shown that it's hard for a smaller group of peopleto act against the forces of linguistic change in the larger world. This is particularly true in the case of pejoration; when a word acquires a negative or taboo meaning it tends to stick. For this reason, I feel that our best efforts may not be enough to shake off the definition of 'hacker' that the public has largely locked on to. Perhaps we should promote the use of a different term instead." I've always been one for educating people on the proper terms, but with the media still largely not-getting-it, would we be better off finding another group moniker? There's more. Click the link if you're interested.

mhiller had more to say. Here's the last bit:

"The confusion stems from the fact that we're using the term 'hacker' in its earlier, non-pejorative sense, but that's not the meaning it's taken on in the popular imagination. To Random Joe on the street, the term 'hacker' means what we call a 'cracker'.

Being a dabbler in linguistics, I can tell you that this isn't a unique process. When a formerly positive or benign word starts taking on a negative connotation, linguists call it pejoration. For example, the term 'villain' originally meant 'belonging to the villa', and referred to people now usually called peasants.

The best thing I could come up with was the term 'white-knight hacker', which isn't very good. So I ask Slashdot: What might be a better (or at least less confusing) way for us to refer to ourselves?"

Re:How about just accepting...

The problem is that a negative definition of "hacker" wasn't really erroneously created. Many of the early system intruders (those who slashdotters like to call "crackers") were indeed hackers, who came up with clever ways to bypass security. When not doing that, they were often writing innovative new programs in a variety of fields. These people, while they broke into systems, were legitimately hackers, by any definition of the term.

The problem is that the media has expanded this to cover anybody who breaks into systems. While some people who break into systems are hackers, not all are, just like while some hackers break into systems, not all do. System intruders (or "crackers," if you prefer), and "hackers," are neither synonymous or mutally inclusive (as the media erroneously assumes), or mutally exclusive (as many slashdotters erroneously assume).

That's the problem. Some hackers are crackers, and some crackers are hackers. However, some crackers are not hackers, and some hackers are not crackers. You cannot say "all hackers are crackers," (what the media and people like IBM's security guru say), but you also can't say "no crackers can be considered hackers," as many slashdotters say.

That's a problem because it's subjective. How do you decide if somebody is worthy of being considered a "hacker"? It's much easier (but wrong) to classify one based on whether they break into systems or not, an erroneous oversimplification of which both the media and slashdotters (and things such as ESR's jargon file) are guilty.

Code Poet

i've had Code Poet on my business cards for 3 years now.

Meaning depends on the times

Right now, the public may think of "hackers" as the way the media presents them. However, consider this: There have been revolutionaires in the past that at the time were looked at as violent, dangerous people who had no good intentions at all (at least from the perspective of the "other side"). However, if those revolutionaires win the war they are fighting, then looking back, people tend to see the losing party as the "evil ones". That's how history works. It won't be over night, but it can be done.

So what should we do to preserve our name? I have a few sugguestions. First of all, any time a cracker makes the media cut, its important to make sure that news is reported properly. The mainstream isn't going to get it right for a while, but if a large number of supplentry articles show up with a different set of terminology, then those phrases will start to catch on, and the media will start using those instead.

It also might be a good idea to stray away from the term "cracker" and create a new term such as "computer vandal". Cracker and hacker sound too much alike and are unlikely to sway the population.

Also, any time a "white hat hacker" makes the news, it is important to use the word "hacker" in a white light. Don't go out of your way to dispell the notition that just because he's a hacker he's not automatically bad, but write it in such a way that it is automatically assumed that hackers are already good and its only the few bad seeds that give the bad names to a community.

-Restil