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April 2004  
  
To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaks into computers. Among
programmers it means a good programmer. But the two meanings are connected. To
programmers, "hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someone who
can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computer wants to or not.  
  
To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It can be either
a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack when you do something in an ugly
way. But when you do something so clever that you somehow beat the system,
that's also called a hack. The word is used more often in the former than the
latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are more common than brilliant
ones.  
  
Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are also connected. Ugly and
imaginative solutions have something in common: they both break the rules. And
there is a gradual continuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly (using
duct tape to attach something to your bike) and rule breaking that is
brilliantly imaginative (discarding Euclidean space).  
  
Hacking predates computers. When he was working on the Manhattan Project,
Richard Feynman used to amuse himself by breaking into safes containing secret
documents. This tradition continues today. When we were in grad school, a
hacker friend of mine who spent too much time around MIT had his own lock
picking kit. (He now runs a hedge fund, a not unrelated enterprise.)  
  
It is sometimes hard to explain to authorities why one would want to do such
things. Another friend of mine once got in trouble with the government for
breaking into computers. This had only recently been declared a crime, and the
FBI found that their usual investigative technique didn't work. Police
investigation apparently begins with a motive. The usual motives are few:
drugs, money, sex, revenge. Intellectual curiosity was not one of the motives
on the FBI's list. Indeed, the whole concept seemed foreign to them.  
  
Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers' general attitude of
disobedience. But that disobedience is a byproduct of the qualities that make
them good programmers. They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic
corporate newspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells them a certain
problem can't be solved. Suppress one, and you suppress the other.  
  
This attitude is sometimes affected. Sometimes young programmers notice the
eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide to adopt some of their own in
order to seem smarter. The fake version is not merely annoying; the prickly
attitude of these posers can actually slow the process of innovation.  
  
But even factoring in their annoying eccentricities, the disobedient attitude
of hackers is a net win. I wish its advantages were better understood.  
  
For example, I suspect people in Hollywood are simply mystified by hackers'
attitudes toward copyrights. They are a perennial topic of heated discussion
on Slashdot. But why should people who program computers be so concerned about
copyrights, of all things?  
  
Partly because some companies use _mechanisms_ to prevent copying. Show any
hacker a lock and his first thought is how to pick it. But there is a deeper
reason that hackers are alarmed by measures like copyrights and patents. They
see increasingly aggressive measures to protect "intellectual property" as a
threat to the intellectual freedom they need to do their job. And they are
right.  
  
It is by poking about inside current technology that hackers get ideas for the
next generation. No thanks, intellectual homeowners may say, we don't need any
outside help. But they're wrong. The next generation of computer technology
has often—perhaps more often than not—been developed by outsiders.  
  
In 1977 there was no doubt some group within IBM developing what they expected
to be the next generation of business computer. They were mistaken. The next
generation of business computer was being developed on entirely different
lines by two long-haired guys called Steve in a garage in Los Altos. At about
the same time, the powers that be were cooperating to develop the official
next generation operating system, Multics. But two guys who thought Multics
excessively complex went off and wrote their own. They gave it a name that was
a joking reference to Multics: Unix.  
  
The latest intellectual property laws impose unprecedented restrictions on the
sort of poking around that leads to new ideas. In the past, a competitor might
use patents to prevent you from selling a copy of something they made, but
they couldn't prevent you from taking one apart to see how it worked. The
latest laws make this a crime. How are we to develop new technology if we
can't study current technology to figure out how to improve it?  
  
Ironically, hackers have brought this on themselves. Computers are responsible
for the problem. The control systems inside machines used to be physical:
gears and levers and cams. Increasingly, the brains (and thus the value) of
products is in software. And by this I mean software in the general sense:
i.e. data. A song on an LP is physically stamped into the plastic. A song on
an iPod's disk is merely stored on it.  
  
Data is by definition easy to copy. And the Internet makes copies easy to
distribute. So it is no wonder companies are afraid. But, as so often happens,
fear has clouded their judgement. The government has responded with draconian
laws to protect intellectual property. They probably mean well. But they may
not realize that such laws will do more harm than good.  
  
Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws? If I were a
legislator, I'd be interested in this mystery—for the same reason that, if I
were a farmer and suddenly heard a lot of squawking coming from my hen house
one night, I'd want to go out and investigate. Hackers are not stupid, and
unanimity is very rare in this world. So if they're all squawking, perhaps
there is something amiss.  
  
Could it be that such laws, though intended to protect America, will actually
harm it? Think about it. There is something very _American_ about Feynman
breaking into safes during the Manhattan Project. It's hard to imagine the
authorities having a sense of humor about such things over in Germany at that
time. Maybe it's not a coincidence.  
  
Hackers are unruly. That is the essence of hacking. And it is also the essence
of Americanness. It is no accident that Silicon Valley is in America, and not
France, or Germany, or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color
inside the lines.  
  
I lived for a while in Florence. But after I'd been there a few months I
realized that what I'd been unconsciously hoping to find there was back in the
place I'd just left. The reason Florence is famous is that in 1450, it was New
York. In 1450 it was filled with the kind of turbulent and ambitious people
you find now in America. (So I went back to America.)  
  
It is greatly to America's advantage that it is a congenial atmosphere for the
right sort of unruliness—that it is a home not just for the smart, but for
smart-alecks. And hackers are invariably smart-alecks. If we had a national
holiday, it would be April 1st. It says a great deal about our work that we
use the same word for a brilliant or a horribly cheesy solution. When we cook
one up we're not always 100% sure which kind it is. But as long as it has the
right sort of wrongness, that's a promising sign. It's odd that people think
of programming as precise and methodical. _Computers_ are precise and
methodical. Hacking is something you do with a gleeful laugh.  
  
In our world some of the most characteristic solutions are not far removed
from practical jokes. IBM was no doubt rather surprised by the consequences of
the licensing deal for DOS, just as the hypothetical "adversary" must be when
Michael Rabin solves a problem by redefining it as one that's easier to solve.  
  
Smart-alecks have to develop a keen sense of how much they can get away with.
And lately hackers have sensed a change in the atmosphere. Lately hackerliness
seems rather frowned upon.  
  
To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seems especially ominous.
That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care especially about civil
liberties? Why programmers, more than dentists or salesmen or landscapers?  
  
Let me put the case in terms a government official would appreciate. Civil
liberties are not just an ornament, or a quaint American tradition. Civil
liberties make countries rich. If you made a graph of GNP per capita vs. civil
liberties, you'd notice a definite trend. Could civil liberties really be a
cause, rather than just an effect? I think so. I think a society in which
people can do and say what they want will also tend to be one in which the
most efficient solutions win, rather than those sponsored by the most
influential people. Authoritarian countries become corrupt; corrupt countries
become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there is a Laffer
curve for government power, just as for tax revenues. At least, it seems
likely enough that it would be stupid to try the experiment and find out.
Unlike high tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if it turns out to be
a mistake.  
  
This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn't literally
make programmers write worse code. It just leads eventually to a world in
which bad ideas win. And because this is so important to hackers, they're
especially sensitive to it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from a
distance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.  
  
It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measures intended to protect
national security and intellectual property turned out to be a missile aimed
right at what makes America successful. But it would not be the first time
that measures taken in an atmosphere of panic had the opposite of the intended
effect.  
  
There is such a thing as Americanness. There's nothing like living abroad to
teach you that. And if you want to know whether something will nurture or
squash this quality, it would be hard to find a better focus group than
hackers, because they come closest of any group I know to embodying it.
Closer, probably, than the men running our government, who for all their talk
of patriotism remind me more of Richelieu or Mazarin than Thomas Jefferson or
George Washington.  
  
When you read what the founding fathers had to say for themselves, they sound
more like hackers. "The spirit of resistance to government," Jefferson wrote,
"is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wish it always to be kept alive."  
  
Imagine an American president saying that today. Like the remarks of an
outspoken old grandmother, the sayings of the founding fathers have
embarrassed generations of their less confident successors. They remind us
where we come from. They remind us that it is the people who break rules that
are the source of America's wealth and power.  
  
Those in a position to impose rules naturally want them to be obeyed. But be
careful what you ask for. You might get it.  
  
  
  
  
  
**Thanks** to Ken Anderson, Trevor Blackwell, Daniel Giffin, Sarah Harlin,
Shiro Kawai, Jessica Livingston, Matz, Jackie McDonough, Robert Morris, Eric
Raymond, Guido van Rossum, David Weinberger, and Steven Wolfram for reading
drafts of this essay.  
  
(The image shows Steves Jobs and Wozniak with a "blue box." Photo by Margret
Wozniak. Reproduced by permission of Steve Wozniak.)  
  
  
  
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| | Romanian Translation  
  
  
  
  
  

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|  You'll find this essay and 14 others in **_Hackers & Painters_**.