The Origin of “Hacker” April 1, 2008
Posted by tickletux in Computer Security, etymology.trackback
Everytime the media carries a sensationalist story about “hackers” committing cybercrimes there’s always an uproar among geeks about the misappropriation of the word “hacker”. Sadly it’s the geeks who are mistaken and not for once the media.
A few years ago Fred Shapiro tracked down the earliest known reference to computer hackers:
1963 The Tech (MIT student newspaper) 20 Nov. 1 Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Prof. Carlton Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system. … The hackers have accomplished such things as tying up all the tie-lines between Harvard and MIT, or making long-distance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP-1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outside line, was found. … Because of the “hacking,” the majority of the MIT phones are “trapped.”
This is the earliest know usage of hacker in the modern sense, the TMRC Dictionary has it a few years earlier but not in the computer sense. The earliest computer related uses of the term (through anecdotal evidence) were also malicious (although the term wasn’t originally intended maliciously – in practice it was) in the sense that they involved gaining unauthorized access to computers to play on.
The modern “geek” definition of the term hacker to reflect a skilled programmer didn’t originate until the late seventies when the term ended up in the later famous Jargon File.
That doesn’t mean to say we should all stop using the word “hacker” in it’s positive sense, but as evidence advocating geeks we should at least stop claiming a false history to support our cause. As we all know where that ends up.
In response to those who disagree with me: If you think I’m wrong then show me the evidence, if you can find earlier records showing hack(er)s being used in a computer context in a non-”black hat” manner I’d be happy to retract my post and put the evidence up here.
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april fools joke?
no actually it’s serious, maybe it was a bad day to post it
Actually, you’re the one who’s mistaken — history *does* support the benign view. As you note, the term hacker dates back even to the Tech Model Railroad Club. The term was generalized to include all sorts of neat but benign tomfoolery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_hack) including white hat phone phreaking. At MIT, there’s definitely always been a sense that hacking has a code of ethics and that people who do bad things under the guise of hacking aren’t hacking at all.
The Tech’s 1963 reference to malicious phreakers as hackers is the same as modern day references to crackers as hackers: a mistake.
The secondary source of wikipedia doesn’t count as evidence, while you’re right term “hack” was used in a “positive” sense with regards to model railways, “hack” in the context of computers wasn’t. In the earliest days at TMRC it was used with regards to gain unauthorized access on MIT’s computer systems (although with less negative connotations then it has now). The modern geek “hacker” sense which is in common use now of an elite programmer didn’t come around until much later.
You dismiss his source but are fine to support your defense of the media by using the media as a source?
(I know it is produced by students but it is still a newspaper)
Also I don’t see why you are limiting it to the earliest computer reference, as far as I can see your quote above is not really about computers itself. Technology, yes – computers, no.
Agreed it does say they used a computer, but there actual target was the phone system (so today they would be called phreakers)
Thats kind of interesting, I guess people always find a way of exploiting things.
I think the evidence is quite in favor of hacking being a black-hat term from the get go. It’s a leap to say otherwise. The “hacker as hero” or “Robin Hood hacker” motif, while fun to think about, doesn’t have much basis in reality… I’d be interested to see a (legit) piece of evidence to that effect.
a) Criminal activity is not and has never been a defining part of a “hack” or “hacker”. That doesn’t mean a hacker can’t commit computer related crimes. But that is not what defines him/her. This is also what the originator of the 1959 TMRC dictionary claims (TMRC jargon was largely “copied” into the early computer culture).
b) As the jargon-file says, phreaking was considered a “semi-respectable activity among hackers”: “At one time phreaking was a semi-respectable activity among hackers; there was a gentleman’s agreement that phreaking as an intellectual game and a form of exploration was OK, but serious theft of services was taboo.”
c) And besides: just because a professor at the institution uses the word in an interview, doesn’t mean he actually knows how the people belonging to the culture use the word (he even says “the so-called”, which hints that he is not conversant with the culture himself). Even though his use of the word is not contradictory to this [non-criminal] definition.
To sum up: media is WRONG when they use the word hacker to imply a computer criminal when they do this regardless of his/her skill, creativity and ingenuity. A computer criminal CAN be a hacker, but it IS NOT, AND HAS NEVER BEEN, A DEFINING ATTRIBUTE of a hacker. Most uses of “hacker” in media is plainly wrong, and so are your interpretation of your sources, in my opinion.
Wonderful reading!
Awesome write up, I am always looking for computer facts from the pass, I really enjoyed the one where Bill Gates said 640K would be enough memory for anyone.
I was actually poking around for the etymology for the word just a while ago. Read this article, noticed it was rather old and continued on.
I found that the term does indeed originate from MIT. Apparently, in the early 60s there were two types of students: Tools and Hackers. It was presumed there was no middle ground.
The Tools would attend class regularly, get straight As and be in the library if there weren’t any classes. (I note here, with relish, that this term has entered pop-culture’s slang lexicon as a derogatory term).
Hackers, on the other hand, were Tools’ antithesis. They didn’t go to classes, didn’t get good marks, slept in all day. What set them above drop-outs was the fact that they had a hobby. Trains, construction, and also: computers.
BTW, you can’t cite a media as a source for etymology. A newspaper’s goal is to sell newspapers. To that end, they will always slant things, people, and groups in such a way that it is sensationalist. A white-hat hacker isn’t sensational. A black-hat cracker is. Add to the above mix, a general misunderstanding of word usage, and you’ve got a recipe to (incorrectly) use the word ‘hacker’ to describe a malicious cracker.
If I had a penny for every time the mass-media misinterpreted something, I’d be buying up a controlling share of Microsoft’s stock.
The source I will cite for the origin of the word: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~bh/hacker.html