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IP: a letter to william safire
From: Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>
Date: Wed, 09 Oct 1996 17:41:40 -0400
From: "Schwartz, John" <schwartzj () washpost com> To: "'smtp:farber () central cis upenn edu'" <farber () central cis upenn edu> Date: Wed, 09 Oct 96 17:04:00 PDT William Safire The New York Times Washington bureau 1627 I Street NW Washington DC 20006 delivered via fax: 862-0340 October 8, 1996 Dear Mr. Safire: As avid readers of your "On Language" column, we appreciate your attempts to bring etymology to a larger audience. As writers on computer and technology issues, we had hoped that you might some day do justice to the word "hackers." How dismayed we were to find instead that you have repeated a long-standing error. You will recall that in last Sunday's column, you wrote that "the modern term for 'cyberobber' comes from the verb to hack, meaning "to chop or cut crudely," which led to the sense of "to do a successful job," as in "That fellow can really hack it." Computer hackers are good at what they do until they get caught, while foreign correspondent hacks are ejected from totalitarian states when they are doing a good job." The line is clever, but incorrect. The locution was originally used in recognition of computer programming wizardry--with connotations of ingenuity and elegance, not simple brute force. The term is still used in that way by many in the high-tech community. In writing the book Hackers, which chronicles the origins of the technology tribe, Steven Levy traced this usage to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Tech Model Railroad Club. The model railroaders there used the term "hacking" to refer to their elaborate work on the electronics underneath the "board" that held the impressive train layout. When the TMRC students obtained access to a computer in the late fifties, they transferred the term to their pioneering explorations in interactive programming, and called themselves hackers. From this, the term spread. Although no one seems to know when the railroaders first used the term, it seems certain that besides (or instead of) the oft-repeated "to improve with an ax" derivation, the usage owes to a particular use of the word at MIT: For decades, the work "hack" was synonomous with the the Intsitute's famously flamboyant student pranks, such as covering the Institute's signature dome on Massachusetts Avenue with tinfoil. Certainly the word "hackers" has acquired darker connotations over the years. But its origins are brighter, and better, and deserve to be noted and preserved. Sincerely, John Schwartz science and technology reporter, The Washington Post. (202) 334-5043 Steven Levy senior editor, Newsweek; author, "Hackers." (212) 445-5503 Mike Godwin staff counsel, Electronic Frontier Foundation and contributing writer, Wired (510) 548-3290
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