Hello, running in the shadows! Hello, random hackers. In a couple of our previous articles on this channel, we have already tried to answer the question: "Who is a hacker?". It's time to ask the hackers themselves.
Go:
Who lives at the bottom of the Internet? That's right, hackers (deckers, shadowrunners, cyberstalkers, etc.)
These clever guys know where you keep your money and how to make you nervous. They break everything from the neighbor's Wi-Fi to the Pentagon's website. What for? Sometimes for money. Sometimes just to amuse your ego. If you want to hack the VK page or just find out your first and last name by phone number, you just need to go where you need to go. However, everyone already knows that hackers "can do anything", so they often torment them with requests "well, you're a hacker, do it". Although hacker is a world-class title, since we only write about "big fish".
Who is a hacker?
John Draper, known as Cap'n Crunch, one of the first hackers in the history of the computer world:
"A hacker is a person who can figure out how to get around an obstacle that stands in his way."
Stuart Brand Stewart Brand, writer, author of "The Whole Earth Catalog":
"For me, a hacker is any lazy, smart engineer who uses ingenuity to make something cool."
Sherry Turkle, MIT Professor and author:
"Hacker is a word whose meaning depends entirely on the context. When I talk about the first hackers at MIT, the founders of Apple, and Bill Gates, people think of visionaries – those without whom we wouldn't have our digital culture as we know it. But just change the context a little bit and people already hear this word as a threat to the security of their money and personal information."
Bruce Sterling, writer, one of the leaders of cyberpunk:
"Thirty years ago, a 'hacker' was a smart young guy trying to gain access to expensive and complex 'computers'. Back then, computers worked pretty poorly, but it wasn't a big deal – hackers were happy just to be able to program. Life was full.
The modern hacker is different. He is not young, has access to vast networks of computers, and has a strong cultural sensitivity. In his opinion, laws, ethics, society, and the economy are not something sacred, not proper ways to live. It's just code. And everything can be hacked.
Those who understand this are right. Others are forced to rely on instructions, norms, public opinion and other "crutches" and should be grateful to hackers for showing limitations in their worldview.
But normal people aren't hackers, and they're rarely happy to be corrected. Normal people don't show much interest in exploring the arcane possibilities of complex systems. There was always something wrong with normal people.
In 2014, we saw a lot of Black hats (English "Black hats" — those who use their knowledge for selfish purposes or simply for evil) hackers. Their number is astounding. They are socially organized. Hackers have become a large, prosperous, globalized criminal class.
But it's not like hackers were always good and now they're bad. No. It's just that hackers have always been human, and if they didn't have so many temptations before, now they are.
To be honest, the offshore oligarchs set an example of global criminal behavior — the "Black Hats" did not invent it themselves, but successfully adopted it.
It took quite a long time to move from the joyous enthusiasm of early hacks to the immoral nihilism of today's cyber crimes. In 2014, we got the "hackers" we deserved.
The situation is bad, because now is the time. But one day it will be 2034."
Ted Nelson, sociologist, pioneer in the field of information technology, creator of Xanadu:
"Hacker is a word whose meaning can be either positive or negative. Many of those who call themselves hackers are brilliant programmers with ideals, others are brilliant programmers with bad intentions. The public will never understand."
Jennifer Granick, Director of Civil Liberties for the Center for Internet and Society at Stanford Law School:
"There are a lot of hackers. The head of the US Cyber Command believes that a cyber Pearl Harbor is just around the corner. The only reason it hasn't happened yet is because of luck. But one day our luck will run out.
You may not notice the loss of $445 billion a year, but this is how much richer we would be if it weren't for hackers, as the government says. And the government wants to help us. Step one: Monitor the entire network for bad guys.
At the same time, the head of the National Security Agency (same office, same person) is engaged in encryption, hacking routers and developing plans for network attacks. He hires analysts, telling them that they can do things here that would be illegal anywhere else. The characters of Orwell's 1984 would be right at home here.
Mark Zuckerberg calls himself a hacker and praises this path. The hackers I met in 1995 are now the founders and CEOs of multimillion-dollar companies. Coding is all about new reading, writing, and arithmetic.
But hackers continue to operate in a world limited by money, race, gender, economic power, and government control. As Thomas Jefferson said, "a little rebellion now and then is a good thing." Now is probably a good time for a small riot. Hackers will definitely be a part of it."
Kevin Mitnick, former hacker turned computer security consultant:
"A person who likes to learn technology and find their own ways around obstacles to beat the system."
Matt Mullenweg, CEO of Automattic:
"A hacker approaches everything in the world from the perspective of what it might be for, not what it is for, and writes across lined paper."
Andy Hertzfeld, Mac and Google developer:
"A hacker is someone who likes to make things and is fascinated by the complex systems they like to build, expand, and break."
Andrew Bosworth, CTO of Facebook:
"At its core, hacking is a problem-solving approach. This is an optimistic belief that everything that was created, including the hacker himself, can be improved. This is a skeptical attitude to complex solutions. This is a belief in people and, accordingly, the confidence that if many people work in one direction without any success, then the solution to the problem must be somewhere in the other direction.
It is the belief that a good solution today is better than a brilliant solution tomorrow. It is the belief that the faster something is done, the faster a perfect result can be achieved (but it is also skepticism that a perfect result even exists).
It is a belief in failure and in sharing both successes and failures openly so that others can build on what has already been done. After solving one problem, the hacker does not stop, but moves on to another problem."
The survey was conducted by journalist Stephen Levy.
That's how it is, gentlemen. Maybe in these answers of well-known cyberstalkers, someone will see themselves, their worldview, and their opinion. In any case, this article will help you answer the question: "Do I want to earn money online?"
