NationMaster - Encyclopedia: Hacker culture

The hacker culture is the voluntary subculture established between and around hackers. There are two mainstream subcultures within the larger hacker subculture. Image File history File links Unbalanced_scales. ... As understood in sociology, anthropology and cultural studies, a subculture is a set of people with a distinct set of behaviour and beliefs that differentiate them from a larger culture of which they are a part. ... Hackers are sometimes portrayed as mysterious and strange. ...

Two subcultures

The academic hacker subculture developed in the 1960s among hackers working on early minicomputers in academic computer science environments, especially at MIT. After 1969 it fused with the technical culture of the pioneers of the Internet, after 1980 with the culture of Unix, and after 1987 with elements of the early microcomputer hobbyists. Since the mid-1990s, it has been largely coincident with what is now called the free software movement. The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... Hackers are sometimes portrayed as mysterious and strange. ... Minicomputer (colloquially, mini) is a largely obsolete term for a class of multi-user computers which make up the middle range of the computing spectrum, in between the largest multi-user systems (traditionally, mainframe computers) and the smallest single-user systems (microcomputers or personal computers). ... Computer science, or computing science, is the study of the theoretical foundations of information and computation and their implementation and application in computer systems. ... MapÃºa Institute of Technology (MIT, MapÃºaTech or simply MapÃºa) is a private, non-sectarian, Filipino tertiary institute located in Intramuros, Manila. ... 1969 (MCMLXIX) was a common year starting on Wednesday (the link is to a full 1969 calendar). ... 1980 (MCMLXXX) was a leap year starting on Tuesday. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... 1987 (MCMLXXXVII) was a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Commodore 64 was one of the most popular microcomputers of its era, and is the best selling home computer of all time. ... See also 1990s, the band The 1990s decade refers to the years from 1990 to 1999, inclusive, sometimes informally including popular culture from the very late 1980s and from 2000 and beyond. ... The free software movement began in 1983 when Richard Stallman announced the GNU project. ...

While some claim origins related to radio amateurs in 1920s (in the context of phreaking), the hobby and network hacker subculture primarily developed in the 1960s. It is often implicated with 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and the alt.2600 newsgroup. There are also relations to hobbyist home computing of the early 80s; however, contrary to the academic hacker subculture, such links are mostly by way of commercial computer and video games, software cracking and later the demoscene. The 1920s was a decade sometimes referred to as the Jazz Age or the Roaring Twenties, usually applied to America. ... Phreaking is a slang term coined to describe the activity of a subculture of people who study, experiment with, or exploit telephones, the telephone company, and systems connected to or composing the Public Switched Telephone Network (PSTN) for the purposes of hobby or utility. ... The 1960s decade refers to the years from 1960 to 1969, inclusive. ... Fall 2004 (21:3) 2600 Issue 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is a traditional (printed) magazine named for the fact that phreakers in the 1960s found that the transmission of a 2600 Hertz tone (which could be produced perfectly with a plastic toy whistle given away free with Capn Crunch... Namcos Pac-Man was a hit, and became a cultural phenomenon. ... Software cracking is the modification of software to remove encoded copy prevention. ... The demoscene is a computer art subculture that specializes itself on producing demos, non-interactive audio-visual presentations, which are run real-time on a computer. ...

There are overlaps in ideas and members of both subcultures. The main break between them is most often traced to the 1983 mass media coverage of hackers which failed to distinguish between the two aspects of the wider subculture. Since that time, members of the first subculture have a tendency to look down and disassociate from these overlaps. They often refer disparagingly to people in the second subculture as crackers, and often refuse to accept any definition of hacker that encompasses such activities (see the Hacker definition controversy). The second subculture on the other hand tends not to distinguish between the two subcultures as harshly, instead acknowledging that they have much in common including many members, political and social ideologies, and a love of learning about technology. They have more a tendency to categorize people into script kiddies and black hat (for which two groups the second subculture reserves the term cracker), grey hat and white hat hackers. They also sometimes refer to the first subculture as conservative hackers; however, this term is rarely used or taken seriously outside of the influence of the second hacker subculture. 1983 (MCMLXXXIII) was a common year starting on Saturday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Mass media is a term used to denote, as a class, that section of the media specifically conceived and designed to reach a very large audience (typically at least as large as the whole population of a nation state). ... Hackers are sometimes portrayed as mysterious and strange. ... The terms hacker and hacking have controversial definitions. ... In computing, a script kiddie (occasionally script bunny, script kitty, script kiddo or skiddie) is a derogatory term for inexperienced crackers who use scripts and programs developed by others, without knowing what they are or how they work, for the purpose of compromising computer accounts and files, and for launching... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Hacker (computer security). ... Grey hat in the computer security community, is a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally and in good will and sometimes not. ... A Whitehat, also rendered as White hat or White-hat, is, in the realm of Information technology, a name that describes a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of Computer systems. ...

Academic hacking

History

Before communications between computers and computer users was as networked as it is now, there were multiple independent and parallel hacker subcultures, often unaware or only partially aware of each others' existence. All of these had certain important traits in common: A computer network is a system for communication between computers. ...

These sorts of subcultures were commonly found at academic settings such as college campuses. The MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, the University of California, Berkeley and Carnegie Mellon University were particularly well-known hotbeds of early hacker culture. They evolved in parallel, and largely unconsciously, until the Internet and other developments such as the rise of the free software movement drew together a critically large population and encouraged the spread of a conscious, common, and systematic ethos. Symptomatic of this evolution was an increasing adoption of common slang and a shared view of history, similar to the way in which other occupational groups have professionalized themselves but without the formal credentialling process characteristic of most professional groups. In software engineering, a project fork or branch happens when a developer (or a group of them) takes a copy of source code from one software package and starts to independently develop a new package. ... Plato is credited with the inception of academia: the body of knowledge, its development and transmission across generations. ... The term college (Latin collegium) is most often used today to denote an educational institution. ... The UniversitÃ¤tscampus Wien, Austria ( details) Campus (plural: campi) is Latin for field or open space. English gets the words camp and campus from this origin. ... The MIT Artificial intelligence Laboratory was an interdisciplinary research entity at MIT founded in 1959, and one of the most influential and accomplished in the field. ... The University of California, Berkeley (also known as UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, and by other names, see below) is the oldest and flagship campus of the ten-campus University of California system. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... The free software movement began in 1983 when Richard Stallman announced the GNU project. ... This is a list of the origins of computer-related terms (i. ...

Over time, the academic hacker subculture has tended to become more conscious, more cohesive, and better organized. The most important consciousness-raising moments have included the composition of the first Jargon File in 1973, the promulgation of the GNU Manifesto in 1985, and the publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar in 1997. Correlated with this has been the gradual election of a set of shared culture heroes: Bill Joy, Donald Knuth, Dennis Ritchie, Alan Kay, Ken Thompson, Richard M. Stallman, Linus Torvalds, and Larry Wall, among others. The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ... 1973 (MCMLXXIII) was a common year starting on Monday. ... The GNU Manifesto was written by Richard Stallman at the beginning of the GNU Project, to ask for participation and support. ... 1985 (MCMLXXXV) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Cathedral and the Bazaar (abbreviated CatB) is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. ... 1997 (MCMXCVII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... Bill Joy (left) with Paul Saffo. ... Donald Knuth at a reception for the Open Content Alliance. ... Ken Thompson (left) with Dennis Ritchie (right) Dennis MacAlistair Ritchie (born September 9, 1941) is a computer scientist notable for his influence on ALTRAN, B, BCPL, C, Multics, and Unix. ... Alan Kay during an interview. ... Ken Thompson Kenneth Thompson (born February 4, 1943) is a pioneer of computer science notable for his contributions to the development of the C programming language and the UNIX operating system. ... Richard Matthew Stallman (abbreviated to RMS) (born March 16, 1953) is both an acclaimed activist and hacker. ... Linus Benedict Torvalds (born December 28, 1969 in Helsinki, Finland) is a Finnish software engineer best known for initiating the development of the Linux kernel. ... Larry Wall (b. ...

The concentration of academic hacker subculture has paralleled and partly been driven by the commoditization of computer and networking technology, and has in turn accelerated that process. In 1975, hackerdom was scattered across several different families of operating systems and disparate networks; today it is largely a Unix and TCP/IP phenomenon, and is concentrated around various open-source operating systems. 1975 (MCMLXXV) was a common year starting on Wednesday. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ... Unix or UNIX is a computer operating system originally developed in the 1960s and 1970s by a group of AT&T employees at Bell Labs including Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and Douglas McIlroy. ... The Internet protocol suite is the set of communications protocols that implement the protocol stack on which the Internet runs. ... Mandriva Linux is an example of open source. ... To meet Wikipedias quality standards, this article or section may require cleanup. ...

Artifacts and customs

The academic hacker subculture is defined by shared work and play focused around central artifacts. Some of these artifacts are very large; the Internet itself, the World Wide Web, the GNU project, and the Linux operating system are all hacker creations, works of which the subculture considers itself primary custodian. Wikipedia itself can be considered an artifact of the academic hacker subculture. WWWs historical logo designed by Robert Cailliau The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is a global, read-write information space. ... GNU (pronounced ) is a free operating system consisting of a kernel, libraries, system utilities, compilers, and end-user applications. ... Wikipedia is a multilingual, Web-based free content encyclopedia project. ...

Since 1990, the academic hacker subculture has developed a rich range of symbols that serve as recognition symbols and reinforce its group identity. Tux, the Linux penguin, the BSD Daemon, and the Perl Camel stand out as examples. More recently, the use of the glider structure from Conway's Game of Life as a general Hacker Emblem has been proposed by Eric S. Raymond. All of these routinely adorn T-shirts, mugs, and other paraphernalia. This article is about the year. ... The concepts behind Tux, the Linux mascot, were developed in email exchanges on a public mailing list. ... Modern Genera Aptenodytes Eudyptes Eudyptula Megadyptes Pygoscelis Spheniscus For extinct genera, see Systematics Penguins (order Sphenisciformes, family Spheniscidae) are an order of aquatic, flightless birds living exclusively in the Southern Hemisphere. ... BSD Daemon, aka Beastie BSD Daemon is the BSD operating systems mascot, named after a daemon, a type of software program common on Unix-like operating systems. ... The Perl Camel is OReillys logo for the Perl programming language. ... Gospers Glider Gun creating gliders. The Game of Life is a cellular automaton devised by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. ... The Hacker Emblem was first proposed in October 2003 by Eric S. Raymond, claiming a need for a uniting and recognizable symbol for his perception of hacker culture. The image represents a glider formation in Conways Game of Life. ... Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar and the present maintainer of the Jargon File (the printed version also known as The New Hackers Dictionary). Though the Jargon File established his original... T-Shirt A T-shirt (or tee shirt) is a shirt with short or long sleeves, a round neck, put on over the head, without pockets. ... A contemporary mug A mug or coffee mug is a sturdily built type of cup often used for hot beverages, such as coffee, tea, and hot chocolate. ...

Notably, the academic hacker subculture appears to have exactly one annual ceremonial day—April Fool's. There is a long tradition of perpetrating elaborate jokes, hoaxes, pranks and fake websites on this date. This is so well established that hackers look forward every year to the publication of the annual joke RFC, and one is invariably produced. April Fools Day or All Fools Day, though not a holiday in its own right, is a notable day celebrated in many countries on 1 April. ... A hoax is an attempt to trick an audience into believing that something false is real. ... Website - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia /**/ @import /skins-1. ... Every April 1st since 1989, the Internet Engineering Task Force has published one or more humorous RFC documents, following in the path blazed by the June 1973 RFC titled ARPAWOCKY. List RFC 527 - ARPAWOCKY R. Merryman, UCSD; 22 June 1973; a Lewis Carroll pastiche RFC 748 - Telnet randomly-lose option. ...

Documents

The Jargon File has had a special role in acculturating hackers since its origins in the early 1970s. Many textbooks and some literary works shaped the academic hacker subculture, among the most influential are: The Jargon File is a glossary of hacker slang. ...

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution (ISBN 0385191952) is a book by Steven Levy about the hacker culture. ... This article lacks information on the importance of the subject matter. ... GEB cover GÃ¶del, Escher, Bach: an Eternal Golden Braid (commonly GEB) is a Pulitzer Prize-winning book by Douglas Hofstadter, published in 1979 by Basic Books. ... Cover of books The Art of Computer Programming is a comprehensive monograph written by Donald Knuth which covers many kinds of programming algorithms and their analysis. ... Front cover Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP) is a textbook published in 1985 about general computer programming concepts from MIT press written by Massachusetts Institute of Technology professors Harold Abelson and Gerald Jay Sussman, with Julie Sussman. ... The C Programming Language, Brian Kernighan and Dennis Ritchie, one of the most read and trusted books on C. The C Programming Language (also known as K&R or the white book) is a famous computer science book which has been influential in the application and development of the C... The cover of the first novel in the Hitchhikers series, from a late 1990s printing. ... The Tao of Programming is a book written in 1987 by Geoffrey James. ... 23 The Illuminatus! Trilogy is a series of three novels written by Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson. ... The Loompanics Yellow Cover combined 4th & 5th Edition Principia Discordia, (1979). ... Book cover The Mythical Man-Month: Essays on Software Engineering is a book on software project management by Fred Brooks, whose central theme is that Adding manpower to a late software project makes it later. ... The Soul of a New Machine is a non-fiction book, written by Tracy Kidder. ... The Cuckoos Egg is a book written by Clifford Stoll. ... The Unix System is a book by Stephen R. Bourne; it was the first widely-available general introduction to the Unix operating system. ...

Hobby and network hacking

The hobby and network hacker subculture is focused around the computer games industry and the exploitation of computer security. It is often referred to as the computer underground. According to its adherents, it centers around the idea of creative and extraordinary computer usage. Their main points of interest in practice are circumvention of access restriction measures in any thinkable manner and exceptional computer programming, the latter having lead to the partly separate demo scene. As such it consists largely of computer security hackers. Proponents claim to be motivated by artistic and political ends, but are often unconcerned about the use of criminal means to achieve them. This article needs a complete rewrite for the reasons listed on the talk page. ... Computer security is a field of computer science concerned with the control of risks related to computer use. ... The demoscene is a computer sub-culture that came to prominence during the rise of the 16 bit micros (the Atari ST and the Amiga), but demos first appeared during the 8-bit era on computers such as C64 and ZX Spectrum. ... In computer security, hacker refers to a type of computer hacker who is involved in programming and computer insecurity and is able to exploit systems or gain unauthorized access through skills, tactics and detailed knowledge. ...

History

The hobby and networking scene has historical roots in the early phone phreaks of the 1970s and the microcomputer BBS scene of the 1980s. It has a close relation to the 2600: The Hacker Quarterly. It has been suggested that Infamous Hacks and the People that Used them be merged into this article or section. ... A bulletin board system or BBS is software that allows users to connect to the computer system on which the software is installed. ... Fall 2004 (21:3) 2600 Issue 2600: The Hacker Quarterly is a traditional (printed) magazine named for the fact that phreakers in the 1960s found that the transmission of a 2600 Hertz tone (which could be produced perfectly with a plastic toy whistle given away free with Capn Crunch...

Artifacts and customs

Contrary to the academic hacker subculture, hobby and networking hackers have no inherently close connection to the academic world. They have a tendency to work anonymously and in private. It is common among them to use aliases for the purpose of concealing identity, rather than revealing their real names. This practice is uncommon within and even frowned upon by the academic hacker subculture. Members of the hobby and network hacking scene are often being stereotypically described as crackers by the academic hacker subculture, yet see themselves as hackers and even try include academic hackers in what they see as one wider hacker culture, a view harshly rejected by the academic hacker subculture itself. Instead of a hacker–cracker dichotomy, they give more emphasis to a spectrum of different categories, such as white hat, grey hat, black hat and script kiddie. In contrast to the academic hackers, they usually reserve the term cracker to refer to black hat hackers, or more generally hackers with unlawful intentions. A Whitehat, also rendered as White hat or White-hat, is, in the realm of Information technology, a name that describes a person who is ethically opposed to the abuse of Computer systems. ... Grey hat in the computer security community, is a skilled hacker who sometimes acts legally and in good will and sometimes not. ... It has been suggested that this article or section be merged with Hacker (computer security). ... In computing, a script kiddie (occasionally script bunny, script kitty, script kiddo or skiddie) is a derogatory term for inexperienced crackers who use scripts and programs developed by others, without knowing what they are or how they work, for the purpose of compromising computer accounts and files, and for launching...

The hobby and network hacking subculture is supported by regular gatherings, so called cons. These have drawn more and more people every year including SummerCon (Summer), DEF CON, HoHoCon (Christmas), PumpCon (Halloween), H.O.P.E. (Hackers on Planet Earth) and HEU (Hacking at the End of the Universe). They have helped expand the definition and solidify the importance of the hobby and network hacker subculture. In Germany, members of the subculture are organized mainly around the Chaos Computer Club. CONS, Connection-Oriented Network Service, is one of the two OSI stack network layer protocols, the other being CLNS (Connectionless Network Service). ... Summercon is one of the oldest hacker conventions. ... A defcon 13 human badge DEF CON is the worlds largest annual hacker convention, held every year in Las Vegas, Nevada. ... HoHoCon (or XmasCon) was a conference series which took place before or after Christmas in Houston, Texas, sponsored by Drunkfux and the hacker ezine CULT OF THE DEAD COW. The fourth and fifth HoHoCons were also sponsored by Phrack magazine and took place in Austin, Texas. ... Hackers on Planet Earth or HOPE is a conference series sponsored by the hacker magazine 2600 The Hacker Quarterly. ... Enriched uranium is uranium whose uranium-235 content has been increased through the process of isotope separation. ... The Chaos Computer Club (CCC) is one of the biggest and most influental hacker organisations. ...

The subculture has given birth to what its members consider to be novel forms of art, most notably ascii art. It has also produced its own slang and various forms of unusual alphabet use, for example leetspeak. Both things are usually seen as an especially silly aspect by the academic hacker subculture. In part due to this, the slangs of the two subcultures differ substantially. Political attitude usually includes views for freedom of information, freedom of speech, a right for anonymity and most have a strong opposition against copyright, especially digital rights management. Writing programs and performing other activities to support these views is referred to as hacktivism by the subculture. Some go as far as seeing illegal computer cracking ethically justified for this goal; the most common form is website defacement. ASCII art, an artistic medium relying primarily on computers for presentation, consists of pictures pieced together from characters (preferably from the 95 printable characters defined by ASCII). ... Leet (1337) is a sociolect variety used primarily on the Internet, particularly in online games. ... This articles section called History of Copyright does not cite its references or sources. ... Digital Rights Management (generally abbreviated to DRM) is any of several technologies used by publishers (or copyright owners) to control access to and usage of digital data (such as software, music, movies) and hardware, handling usage restrictions associated with a specific instance of a digital work. ... Hacktivism (from hack and activism) is often understood as the writing of code, or otherwise manipulating bits, to promote political ideology - promoting expressive politics, free speech, human rights, or information ethics. ...

Documents

Hackers from the hobby and network hacking subculture often show an adherence to fictional cyberpunk and cyberculture literature and movies. Widely recognized works include: Berlins Sony Center in Potsdamer Platz reflects the global reach of a Japanese corporation. ... Cyberculture is a frequently and flexibly used term lacking an explicit meaning. ...

Absorption of fictional pseudonymes, symbols, values and metaphors from these fictional works are very common. A non-fictional document many members of the subculture identify with is the Hacker's Manifesto. Hackers (ISBN 0441003753) is a collection of short stories edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois. ... The Hacker Crackdown: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontier is a book written by science fiction writer Bruce Sterling in 1992. ... The Sprawl-trilogy, of which Neuromancer is the first part. ... This article is about the 1983 US movie. ... The Matrix is a science fiction/action film written and directed by Larry and Andy Wachowski and starring Keanu Reeves, Laurence Fishburne, Carrie-Anne Moss and Hugo Weaving. ... The Conscience of a Hacker (a. ...

External links

Eric S. Raymond Eric Steven Raymond (born December 4, 1957), often referred to as ESR, is the author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar and the present maintainer of the Jargon File (the printed version also known as The New Hackers Dictionary). Though the Jargon File established his original... Patrick K. Kroupa, 2005. ...

Contents

Academic hacking

History

Artifacts and customs

Documents

Hobby and network hacking

History

Artifacts and customs

Documents

External links

See also