Definitions of Hacking
- I, Reader: A Nod to Asimov’s I, Robot
- Robots and Readers: A Tight Coupling of Container and Content
- Does Technology only Extend Thought? Does It also Supplant It?
- Machine Life: The Final Prejudice
- RB-34 Prefers Slushy Novels
- Creative Reading: A Golden String
- Creative Reading by anemone achtnich
- Creative Reading: The Art of Self
- Creative Reading: Thinking with Other Minds
- Creative Reading: The Art of Self, Take 2
- Creative Reading: The Discovery of Other (Thinking with the Minds of Others, Take 2)
- Creative Reading: The Mathematics of Self, Other and Extension
- What Books Changed You?
- I’ve always admired people who, in a pinch, are better than their principles
- Every Extension Breaks a Rule
- The Trajectory of Reading: Creative Contribution
- I Read, Therefore I Write
- What Readers Write May Not Be Literature, But It Might Become So
- “Narrow it down to … the upper left-hand brick”: Phaedrus
- “No one that he knew had ever written a whole metaphysics before”: Phaedrus
- Using a Blog to Draft a Book Idea: 9 Observations
- From Reading to Writing to Publishing with Digital Media
- Birth of the Reader-Writer
- To Read a Book is to Ignore 4000 Others
- Quantity has a Quality all its Own
- The Web is Re-Wiring My Brain
- How the Web Works for Readers: Thin Connections Lead to Rich Connections
- The Accidental Programmer
- Definitions of Hacking
- Ways of the Reader-Hacker
- Ways of the Reader-Hacker II: Breaking the Rules
- Ways of the Reader Hacker III: Two Bright Ideas
- A Hacker’s Reading List
- Ones and Zeros, On and Off Switches, All Sane Systems Require Downtime
- The Information Race and Pushing the Button
- How to Make an Elephant Statue
- Every Story Deserves a Good Ending
- Expressions of Offworld
- “Would I start to resemble a book myself?”
- Myth of the Reader-Hero
- Print is Digital
- Am I Still Chasing that First Reading High?
- Do Robots Read? Yes I Do (Conclusion to “I, Reader”)
- I, Reader: A Book Outline
- Reading List for Next Draft of I, Reader
Birth of the Reader-Hacker, Pt 3.
I use the term, ‘hacker’, for an activity that some do on the web. It has so many right connotations. It suggests the roughness and freshness of an amateur, as well at the persistence and control of a master. It suggests both creativity, and a willingness to bend or break rules to make technology serve a purpose, rather than being a passive recipient or slave of technology. It is not elitist; it only takes a willingness to think creatively and work hard.
Here are some definitions from others:
Paul Graham, author of Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age. Graham groups hackers with painters, musicians, writers, all makers of art. Hackers don’t engineer software; they usually design it as they are building it. Hackers like innovation and beautiful works. This doesn’t necessarily make for efficient software development, so hackers often need a day job, and work on software they love after hours.
Scott Rosenberg, author of Dreaming in Code. Rosenberg defines “hacker in the word’s original sense of “obsessive programming tinker” rather than the later, tabloid sense of “digital break-in-artist” (6-7).
Cory Doctorow, author of Little Brother. “Hackers are explorers, digital pioneers”.
Eric Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar. “There is a community, a shared culture, of expert programmers and networking wizards that traces its history back through decades to the first time-sharing minicomputers and the earliest ARPAnet experiments. The members of this culture originated the term ‘hacker’. Hackers built the Internet. Hackers made the Unix operating system what it is today. Hackers run Usenet. Hackers make the World Wide Web work. If you are part of this culture, if you have contributed to it and other people in it know who you are and call you a hacker, you’re a hacker.” What is a Hacker
Wikipedia. “Hackers follow a spirit of creative playfulness and anti-authoritarianism, and sometimes use this term to refer to people applying the same attitude to other fields.” Hacker (programmer subculture)
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