Witness your 9 year old. What a joy it is, as a parent, watching a little one pull an old radio apart to discover how it works. Even better when that child can make that radio better. How cool is it when your husband takes the lawn mower apart to make it better, more efficient. I envy all the backyard mechanics that can build a car - or make the one they own better. It is this skill they have of getting behind the scenes to grok a thing...perhaps make it better, perhaps not.

That is a hacker. One that will be curious about a thing and desire to learn it, inside and out, to satisfy a curiosity, or to make a better or more personalized product. Oftentimes the resulting product is only doable because of the nature of business - to dream up, create, and distribute an item in the most cost-efficient way. Hackers don't care about this at all, they simply want to learn. To know.

I will do my utmost to enable my children to embrace this way of thinking - should they desire it. Who knows, I might even jam it down their throats. Already we discuss the inner workings of a thing or why it exists in the first place. I see the curiosity spark in their eye and am quite proud to have curious kids. After all, I was the same way from the age of 2, only my parents were lost and confused.

There is another term that many people fail to recognize. It is "cracker". Many people, after having been misinformed by media, refuse to believe that "cracker" even exists. They may think it's a word used by an underground computing society to deliberately mislead the public - to take the heat off of "hacker". Not true. It is the "cracker" that operates with a mischievous and malevolent method. The "cracker" doesn't care to understand a thing any deeper than the ability to use a thing. For instance, a "cracker" might find a script on the web, in a dark corner, that is designed to disable a protective aspect of a computer enabling him to lurk in and around your machine using it as he desires. Perhaps to include your machine in his arsenal of 2000 to attempt to destroy or otherwise harm a company or a government or you. The "cracker" is a social misfit with arrogant and self-serving ways. We have seen this always and it is a fact. No media conglomerate needs to confuse these terms anymore. Your perception of truth needs an overhaul and your behaviors, actions, and beliefs need to evolve with concepts and discoveries over time. This is contrary to most human behavior - and the big computer companies and governments use this to their advantage. Like you, they fear what they don't understand. A "Hacker" does not. A "hacker" will embrace the unknown in the quest for knowledge. Society would grind to a unfamiliar and dangerous halt were it to dispel "hacker" ideology and attempt to rid the world of the curious.

"Hackers" make your world better by holding the mischievous and greedy accountable. They make our products better by understanding them. I can remember an old BASF commercial..."We don't make many of the products you use, we make them better." BASF is a company of hackers. Research labs across the globe employ scientists that seek to understand a thing. These individuals are "hackers". Should we jail them or allow them to continue and maybe find a cure for Cancer, or stupidity?

It's very unsettling to live in a society dominated by the interests of big business. Indeed. What interest do they have in helping mankind? None, their interest lies in making profit. Should this pursuit of $$ happen to benefit society then ultra-mega-corp will take full advantage of this and use it against us with creative advertising (lies and damned lies) that allows them to continue to profit. Oftentimes we see a big company as hero's when behind the scenes they buy governments to allow them to do about whatever they want...but we see them as hero's even when they sue our 12 year old daughters of kill a small portion of a country's entire population.

It does me no good to write this small article. I don't get paid to do this I merely see it as interesting. I also see it as fruitless because I learned many years ago that you cannot argue with a brick wall, nor can you (me, I) compete against an entity that can pacify a body with something that I cannot. It does serve my interests to keep innocent and curious people out of jail. Or prevent them being branded a misfit by an ignorant body. After all, I am trying to instill a curiosity in my children and at 4 and 7 they run Debian GNU/Linux with an easy and understanding that my parents would have curtailed...simply because they had no idea and they trusted the media or super-ultra-mega corp more than they trusted me. Our children are our greatest resource. They are brainwashed in public schools, they are branded as things by a society that would follow the lead of a company or government instead of their gut or love. I don't see an end because as an American witnessing the behavior of other Americans I am loathe to call us anything other than slow-moving, dim-witted slugs.

Einstein was a Hacker. So was Leonardo Da Vinci. Your 7th grade science teacher was a hacker and so is your Dad, out there in his garage making his "hot-rod". Your Mother researching best ways to save her family money is hacking into the offerings of a society and arriving at a place that is more efficient and better suited to her needs. Shall we put our parents in Jail like the D.A.R.E program tells our children should they hear a drug mentioned at their home. Can you begin to understand the folly of believing a thing without understanding it? No -- I know you simply do what you're told.

I don't call myself a hacker, but I am one. I seek to understand things and make them better. Ever since I was 2 years old and unscrewed the screws holding my Grandmothers coffee table together, or was it when I took her vacuum cleaner apart that I became a hacker? Regardless I am proud to be among the group of Humans that won't take an answer blindly. Why aren't you?

machiner - 28 august 2005

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