cracker. In media these roles are often confused, but to make this difference clear
programming guru Eric Raymond put it simply as: ”hackers build things, crackers
break them.” (Raymond 2001) Yet, hacking is the mastery of a system, often on the
edge of trespassing or the unpermitted, but usually not with ill intent.
This strict distinction easily comes in a moral dilemma and it frames a dispute that
has followed hacking since its birth. It can be also argued that cracking and break-
ing things is a constructive practice and necessary for building. Every hack needs
some initial crack, but to differentiate a hack from a simple deconstruction I stress
the building and constructive modification as a central aspect of hacking.
Underlining the constructive aspect of hacking is quite common, not least among
hackers themselves, and it differs radically to the counterculture’s approach to pro-
test and how to create or facilitate change in a controlled and closed system, be it
software or civil society. According to media theorist William J. Mitchell there is a
difference between the hackers and the -68 movement or the tactics of the Situa-
tionists:
MIT’s nerds have never felt the need to frame their jokes and pranks with French-style
theoretical apparatus, but they do have a characteristic tactic of their own – the hack.
The best hacks are cleverly engineered, site-specific, guerrilla interventions that make
a provocative point but aren’t destructive or dangerous. Unlike hard-core Situation-
ists, who wanted to provoke genuine outrage, true hackers would never consider stunts
like absconding with the severed head of Copenhagen’s Little Mermaid. (Mitchell
2005: 118)The culture of hardware modification has always been around but only over the
last decade has it been popularly referred to as hacking. The aspect of sharing
technological activities and modifying consumer items reached a large audience
with the rise of amateur radio and car modifying, or modding, in the 1920s. This
line of practice intersected with an expanding popular science magazine culture,
documenting the wonders of the rising technological society as well as promoting
hobby inventions and leisure activities. This type of technology modding is root-
ed in the classic Do-It-Yourself (DIY) culture but became “hacking” first with the
introduction of computers.
The hacking approach to computers started out as an academic subculture when
computers were rare and software code and programs was shared among users
and programmers. A good hacker was a good programmer, solving tricky pas-
sages with smart bendings of the existing code, adding new critical parts, improv-
ing it to make it do what was intended. Hacking and reusing code was a way to
shorten queue times to the computers, but also caught the spirit of curious mod-
ifications in which many of the academics were interested. Later, as computers
became more commonplace this practice became common in the hobby net-
works where hardware, programs and operating systems were collectively built
upon.
Defining exactly what “hack” means is not easy since the concept involves many
various fields of use and is also commonly used outside computer contexts. It is
usually an activity of making technology work the way one wants by direct inter-
vention into the functional systems and operations of a machine or device; the
conscious “trickery and manipulation of a system” (Cramer 2003). It also implies
something more than ordinary or everyday use. According to the technical jour-
nalist Steven Levy “the feat must be imbued with innovation, style and technical