Audience of One

H is for Hacker

Some people think hacking is all about breaking into others’ computers, and while that is something I have done (just the once, and the lesson has been learnt) this is not what I mean when I call myself a hacker. A hacker is someone who hacks, and hacking can mean many different things.

I am a hacker because I have an interest in the workings of my computer, and enjoy fiddling around to get things working just right. (This is one reason why I’ve switched to Linux from Windows – you just can’t customise Windows enough.) I also like deconstructing other people’s computer code to see how they’ve done things, and have taught myself all of the programming needed to create this site by doing just that. Circumventing limitations in software is another aspect of hacking that I’m interested in, though never to the extent of it becoming illegal.

I am not, however, a very good hacker. I just don’t have the time to commit to learning non-web programming, for example – or indeed the patience. Even when it comes to something I understand, I often struggle to figure out what’s going on (when it comes to deconstructing PHP scripts for example). I know next to nothing about networking or networking protocols, and probably have an incredibly unsecure system if it wasn’t for the fact we’re behind a secure router with a dynamic IP address. I’d like to become a better hacker, but as I don’t have the patience to learn programming I probably never will.

Becoming a better hacker is often dangerous as well. For example, I recently got talking to people at school who knew their way in networking to an incredible degree – and could teach me how. It was in being taught how that I broke into my first (and only) computer system, something I now regret having done. I did it, though, because the opportunity was there and I didn’t know enough about exactly what I was doing. Who is to say that in experimenting with other forms of hacking I won’t do something similar? I’ve already had to reinstall Linux on two occasions because I’ve messed something up. It gets more scary when you’re dealing with other peoples’ computers though – and there’s only a limited amount you can do on your own.

So I am a hacker, not in the criminal sense (though I have gone down that road briefly, only to run far away from it afterwards) but in the other sense: that of being interested by technology, wanting to mess around with it and being reasonably successful at doing so. The mere fact that I’m writing this from Gentoo Linux shows that to some degree I am a hacker – though, and I am the first to admit it, not to a great degree.

Matthew @ 19:44, May 28, 2005 to ABC | Comments (5)