IP: a letter to william safire

[Dave Farber <farber@central.cis.upenn.edu>]

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