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Episode: 1596
Title: HPR1596: About the Word "Hack"
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1596/hpr1596.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 05:36:20
---
It's Monday 15th on September 2014.
This is an HBR episode 1596 entitled About the Word Hack.
It is posted by Klaatu and is about 14 minutes long.
Feedback can be sent to Klaatu at HackappublicRadio.org or by leaving a comment on this episode.
The summary is Klaatu News is about the Word Hack.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an Honesthost.com.
With 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15, that's HBR15.
Better web hosting that's Honest and Fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hi everyone, this is HackappublicRadio.
My name is Klaatu.
Today I want to talk about the term Hack.
This is a long tradition among the Hack culture to reflectively or recursively look at the term Hack and what it means and what it implies.
The word Hack is an oft misunderstood term.
Historically it meant very specifically someone who writes code.
And then I guess not long after that I guess the media started adopting the term for people who very specifically created committed crimes by way of pretty much anything electronic I think.
It didn't much matter whether it was a phone or a computer.
And both of those meanings do persist today.
Obviously we hear them, we hear the criminal hacking term in the media and then we ourselves obviously apply it to ourselves because we are on a thing called the Word Hack.
But the media lately I've noticed has again adopted and reinvented it to mean pretty much anything that you do that is not already written down somewhere by the manufacturer of whatever you're using.
So for instance if you're using I don't know, tinned pineapple as bookends for your drone cage or own book collection that's a hack because they're not meant to be bookends.
They're just tins of pineapple and now they're bookends so that's a hack if you're using like I've seen online people using butterfly clips they clip them to the desk and then they slide their cables through the little clip parts and that prevents the laptop cable you know from like sliding when you unplug it it doesn't slide onto the floor it just like it hangs there in the butterfly clip or you keep them organized that way or something I don't know and that's apparently a hack.
You know I mean heck if you take vitamin C that would probably be called a hack at this point it's a bio hack that's how cool that one is so the funky thing about terminology is that it's it's truly truly free and the sense of being a free for all no group can really claim to own a word.
Possibly ever but certainly when they didn't make it up you can't really like trademark a term that already exists and obviously you can trademark words that you did make up but I mean there's Xerox and what is it Kleenex so yeah that that's an arguable topic and you could or I could argue I guess that a term like for instance grok that's a made upward so you could you could argue that that belongs to.
Highland and to sci-fi fans who keep it sacred you know they've got certain ownership of of what that word means but I think it's ownership by obscurity because you could you you could imagine a reality where someone adopts that term and destroys its meaning because they have you know a big enough marketing campaign to convince all the pinks of the new meaning then there's not much we could do about it at that point they they've got a louder.
They're a voice than we do so we don't own that term after all hackers did not invent the term hack they repurposed the word probably angering a large number of proud and noble men and women who hack through the bush with machete knives on a regular basis so if the media outlets that assault us on a daily basis decides that hack means any clever solution to any given problem then that's what they're going to do but not without rebuttal and the rebuttal is as follows
the term hack means at least to most hackers and I mean that in the traditional sense it means writing code possibly inclusive of even config files depending on the problem and the solution that you're finding to it now hacks can be beautiful they can be ugly most often they're ugly that's why they're called hacks but the most important thing about hacking is the process.
A hack is something you achieve after trial and error and experimentation failure frustration research practice desperation hatred passion you do not just sit down and look up a tip online make a change to your system and call it a hack because that's not your hack that might be someone else's hack and you can and you should use it if it works and you can you can brag about having used someone else
but you can't claim that hack that's not your hack you have not made you have not done that you have hacked nothing in that scenario but there's no shame in that in itself using other people's hacks it teaches you how to invent hacks of your own so you're on your way you are making progress this is all part of you becoming a hacker you should still be proud of what you've done but don't go like sewing your hacker badge on your gene jacket just yet
the reason this is important is because in the modern world that we live in right now there's an emphasis on the idea that everything quote well designed unquote must also therefore require no effort from the user the user should never have to learn anything new everything should be one button click away and there should be only one button maybe two but too many buttons means that the user has to make a decision about something
and decisions often require some kind of knowledge about what you're what you expect and what you want to do so you'd have to actually work for that this is not why technology is important
if technology exists only to make our lives easier then it's about as important as an easy chair compared to a house
one you need for shelter so you don't die from exposure the other you just want so you can be cozier when you zone out in front of your TV
technology in order for it to be worth all of the evil that it does all the environmental things and and and putting people to work and and polluting things and all that
she and might you know causing us to mine all kinds of minerals small over the place and then we get into wars for them and stuff like that
technology to justify all that stuff should make life better it should atone for its sins of existence and enable us to do amazing things
that will ultimately help humans across the planet live happier and healthier lives I mean that really for at least to any sci-fi geek I think
that's been around for at all any time that's what technology has always been a promise of this isn't something that you
achieve though without effort and hard work you know there there's no make everything better button and no tech company
regardless of how many cool gadgets they sell to make sure that you are entertained whilst doing your yoga classes
none of them are going to be the realization of that and and they will tell you otherwise they they tell you that they're out to change the world
and make the world better but that's not what they're actually doing technology works because hackers work on technology hackers sit down with technology for hours
and hours at a time and those stretching to days and those days stretching to weeks and so on just to solve like one problem and that
hack gets rolled into the next iteration and technology is better for it that's what hacking is and that is what it needs to be in order to
inspire and drive people that constantly improve some people might be motivated by money some by religion some by attention hackers are driven by the process
of finding solutions calling yourself a hacker or laying claim to a hack is you know it's not I don't mean to make it such a personal and precious thing
I'm over dramatizing here a little bit but the historical meaning of the term is significant and abusing it into a pop culture euphemism for simple day-to-day household tips
it kind of erodes the work that's been done and it and that is continuing to be done by you know the real hackers by people who actually
hack on technology and it also I think it creates a false expectation for people because there are people now especially since the media is so full of this stuff
there are people who believe they want to become a hacker quote unquote whatever that means to them but then when they find out that that hacking is is all that all that work
it's not just some simple act that you achieve with the red hacker button on your keyboard they get angry they get frustrated and they stop trying
and that's I think because popular media isn't being realistic as to what and I'm not even saying popular popular media I'm saying popular geek media at this point is not being realistic with what with what being a hacker is hacker is hard work it's a lot of it's iteration after iteration
it's constantly banging your head against the wall trying to solve something so yes get into hacking stand up for hacking get into it suffer a little bit do some hard work man or woman up and make something cool happen it might take a while
and most people won't understand or want to come anywhere near your obsession but in the end you will have achieved something so ugly and twisted something so strange and incomprehensible
something so marvelously bland to the average civilian that you will know by the look of sheer boredom on your audience's faces that you have truly achieved a verifiable and admirable hack
we've been listening to Hacker Public Radio at HackerPublicRadio.org we are a community podcast network that releases shows every weekday Monday through Friday today's show like all our shows was contributed by an HPR listener like yourself
if you ever thought of recording a podcast then click on our contributing to find out how easy it really is
HackerPublic Radio was founded by the digital dog pound and the infonomican computer club and it's part of the binary revolution at binwreff.com
if you have comments on today's show please email the host directly leave a comment on the website or record a follow-up episode yourself
unless otherwise status today's show is released on the creative comments, attribution, share a light 3.0 license
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