Hacking origins
Some musings on the hacker archetype and today’s common misconceptions about the practice. Plus an intro to BackBox.
W e’ve given up trying to tell Management about the original meaning of hacking. Namely that it has its origins in electronics buffs repurposing their hardware (which, in the earliest instance, was model railways) to do things it wasn’t designed to do. Today’s hackers still mess around with hardware, but also software, too. We dare say a good portion of the developers of major open source projects would consider themselves hackers – there’s a certain creativity to getting different tools and frameworks to play nicely with each other. Or getting C programming language to do exactly what you want. But none of this will sway Management’s or indeed mainstream media’s view that hackers are nefarious behoodied types intent on mayhem, theft and other vituperative acts.