

Since When Is "Hacker" a Bad Word? - jolie
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/open_thread_since_when_is_hacker_a_bad_word.php

======
derefr
Okay, let me say this again in here, because it's more applicable: a hacker is
an aesthete. No more, no less. That's where both the positive _and_ the
negative connotations of a "hack" come from--hackers judge things on their
beauty/elegance/cleverness/Quality/whatever other term you want to use for an
aesthetic scale, _not_ on their moral or ethical worth/utility. Both the
amateur crackers who break into systems for fun, and the FOSS writers, are
"hackers" in the truest sense of the word, because they're both doing things
that appeal to their aesthetic senses.

Of course, _artists_ are also, by and large, aesthetes. The differences
between "hacker" and "artist" are sort of fuzzy, really: hackers don't
necessarily create, while artists are usually expected to; artists usually
specialize in a given form or medium, while hackers aren't expected to—in
fact, a hacker is usually interested in as many forms of aesthetic expression
as they can get their hands on (although, for some reason, they usually don't
like the fine arts—this is probably more to do with the connotations of fine
art and its relationship to intelligence in Western culture than anything
else.) More precisely, though, a hacker is mostly interested in _new_ forms of
aesthetic expression, where the "classics" haven't yet solidified and there's
no canon skills or methods required before one may dive in. da Vinci would be
both a hacker and an artist in his own period, but brought forward to today he
would merely be the latter.

"Hacker" could be replaced in this day and age with "aesthete" and lose almost
none of its meaning (or "neophile aesthete" and lose none at all.)

~~~
jacquesm
That's all fine and good but the 'popular' use of the word hacker is uniformly
negative.

That is the whole problem here there are two disjoint sets of people that use
the word in an almost opposite way. The popular use does not have room for a
creative angle or a 'for fun' element, it associates hacking with criminal
acts.

That you and I would not use the word in that way is lost on the large
majority of the English speaking world.

On HN if someone would call a defacer a hacker I would likely point out that
that is improper use of the word, but if it were a mainstream publication I
would not because the word has changed its meaning too far to turn it back (or
at least, I think it has).

------
SimonDorfman
Here's my attempt to define hacker from a talk/preso I gave a couple months
ago to an artist crowd: "Currently, "hacker" is used in two main ways, one
pejorative and one complimentary. The pejorative, main-stream definition can
be summed up as: a computer criminal. The complimentary definition is harder
to define, but something like this: basically, a hacker is a curious person
that repurposes stuff, often in a playful or clever or creative way;
stretching some-thing’s capabilities in a new direction it wasn’t designed
for."

video: [http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/11/11/simon-dorfmans-pecha-
kuc...](http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/11/11/simon-dorfmans-pecha-kucha-
presentation-about-gumbo-labs-video/)

slides: [http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/10/30/slides-from-my-gumbo-
lab...](http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/10/30/slides-from-my-gumbo-labs-
presentation-at-pecha-kucha-last-night/)

------
ThinkWriteMute
Since Angelina Jolie was 19.

