April 2004To the popular press, "hacker" means someone who breaksinto computers. Among programmers it means a good programmer.But the two meanings are connected. To programmers,"hacker" connotes mastery in the most literal sense: someonewho can make a computer do what he wants—whether the computerwants to or not.To add to the confusion, the noun "hack" also has two senses. It canbe either a compliment or an insult. It's called a hack whenyou do something in an ugly way. But when you do somethingso clever that you somehow beat the system, that's alsocalled a hack. The word is used more often in the former thanthe latter sense, probably because ugly solutions are morecommon than brilliant ones.Believe it or not, the two senses of "hack" are alsoconnected. Ugly and imaginative solutions have something incommon: they both break the rules. And there is a gradualcontinuum between rule breaking that's merely ugly (usingduct tape to attach something to your bike) and rule breakingthat is brilliantly imaginative (discarding Euclidean space).Hacking predates computers. When hewas working on the Manhattan Project, Richard Feynman used toamuse 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 muchtime around MIT hadhis own lock picking kit.(He now runs a hedge fund, a not unrelated enterprise.)It is sometimes hard to explain to authorities why one wouldwant to do such things.Another friend of mine once got in trouble with the government forbreaking into computers. This had only recently been declareda crime, and the FBI found that their usual investigativetechnique didn't work. Police investigation apparently begins witha motive. The usual motives are few: drugs, money, sex,revenge. Intellectual curiosity was not one of the motives onthe FBI's list. Indeed, the whole concept seemed foreign tothem.Those in authority tend to be annoyed by hackers'general attitude of disobedience. But that disobedience isa byproduct of the qualities that make them good programmers.They may laugh at the CEO when he talks in generic corporatenewspeech, but they also laugh at someone who tells thema certain problem can't be solved.Suppress one, and you suppress the other.This attitude is sometimes affected. Sometimes young programmersnotice the eccentricities of eminent hackers and decide toadopt some of their own in order to seem smarter.The fake version is not merelyannoying; the prickly attitude of these poserscan actually slow the process of innovation.But even factoring in their annoying eccentricities,the disobedient attitude of hackers is a net win. I wish itsadvantages were better understood.For example, I suspect people in Hollywood aresimply mystified byhackers' attitudes toward copyrights. They are a perennialtopic of heated discussion on Slashdot.But why should people who program computersbe so concerned about copyrights, of all things?Partly because some companies use mechanisms to preventcopying. Show any hacker a lock and his first thought ishow to pick it. But there is a deeper reason thathackers are alarmed by measures like copyrights and patents.They see increasingly aggressive measures to protect"intellectual property"as a threat to the intellectualfreedom they need to do their job.And they are right.It is by poking about inside current technology thathackers get ideas for the next generation. No thanks,intellectual homeowners may say, we don't need anyoutside help. But they're wrong.The next generation of computer technology hasoften—perhaps more often than not—been developed by outsiders.In 1977 there was no doubt some group within IBM developingwhat they expected to bethe next generation of business computer. They were mistaken.The next generation of business computer wasbeing developed on entirely different lines by two long-hairedguys called Steve in a garage in Los Altos. At about thesame time, the powers that bewere cooperating to develop theofficial next generation operating system, Multics.But two guys who thought Multics excessively complex went offand wrote their own. They gave it a name thatwas a joking reference to Multics: Unix.The latest intellectual property laws imposeunprecedented restrictions on the sort of poking around thatleads to new ideas. In the past, a competitor might use patentsto prevent you from selling a copy of something theymade, but they couldn't prevent you fromtaking one apart to see how it worked. The latestlaws make this a crime. How are weto develop new technology if we can't study currenttechnology to figure out how to improve it?Ironically, hackers have brought this on themselves.Computers are responsible for the problem. The control systemsinside machines used to be physical: gears and levers and cams.Increasingly, the brains (and thus the value) of products isin software. And by this I mean software in the general sense:i.e. data. A song on an LP is physically stamped into theplastic. A song on an iPod's disk is merely stored on it.Data is by definition easy to copy. And the Internetmakes copies easy to distribute. So it is no wondercompanies are afraid. But, as so often happens, fear hasclouded their judgement. The government has respondedwith draconian laws to protect intellectual property.They probably mean well. Butthey may not realize that such laws will do more harmthan good.Why are programmers so violently opposed to these laws?If I were a legislator, I'd be interested in thismystery—for the same reason that, if I were a farmer and suddenlyheard 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 somethingvery American about Feynman breaking into safes duringthe Manhattan Project. It's hard to imagine the authoritieshaving a sense of humor about such things overin Germany at that time. Maybe it's not a coincidence.Hackers are unruly. That is the essence of hacking. And itis also the essence of Americanness. It is no accidentthat Silicon Valleyis in America, and not France, or Germany,or England, or Japan. In those countries, people color insidethe lines.I lived for a while in Florence. But after I'd been therea few months I realized that what I'd been unconsciously hopingto 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 ambitiouspeople you find now in America. (So I went back to America.)It is greatly to America's advantage that it isa congenial atmosphere for the right sort of unruliness—thatit is a home not just for the smart, but for smart-alecks.And hackers are invariably smart-alecks. If we had a nationalholiday, it would be April 1st. It says a great deal aboutour work that we use the same word for a brilliant or ahorribly cheesy solution. When we cook one up we're notalways 100% sure which kind it is. But as long as it hasthe right sort of wrongness, that's a promising sign.It's odd that peoplethink of programming as precise and methodical. Computersare precise and methodical. Hacking is something you dowith a gleeful laugh.In our world some of the most characteristic solutionsare not far removed from practicaljokes. IBM was no doubt rather surprised by the consequencesof the licensing deal for DOS, just as the hypothetical"adversary" must be when Michael Rabin solves a problem byredefining it as one that's easier to solve.Smart-alecks have to develop a keen sense of how much theycan get away with. And lately hackers have sensed a changein the atmosphere.Lately hackerliness seems rather frowned upon.To hackers the recent contraction in civil liberties seemsespecially ominous. That must also mystify outsiders. Why should we care especially about civilliberties? Why programmers, more thandentists 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 quaintAmerican tradition. Civil liberties make countries rich.If you made a graph ofGNP per capita vs. civil liberties, you'd notice a definitetrend. Could civil liberties really be a cause, ratherthan just an effect? I think so. I think a society in whichpeople can do and say what they want will also tend tobe one in which the most efficient solutions win, rather thanthose sponsored by the most influential people.Authoritarian countries become corrupt;corrupt countries become poor; and poor countries are weak. It seems to me there isa Laffer curve for government power, just as fortax revenues. At least, it seems likely enough that itwould be stupid to try the experiment and find out. Unlikehigh tax rates, you can't repeal totalitarianism if itturns out to be a mistake.This is why hackers worry. The government spying on people doesn'tliterally make programmers write worse code. It just leadseventually to a world in which bad ideas win. And becausethis is so important to hackers, they're especially sensitiveto it. They can sense totalitarianism approaching from adistance, as animals can sense an approaching thunderstorm.It would be ironic if, as hackers fear, recent measuresintended to protect national security and intellectual propertyturned out to be a missile aimed right at what makes America successful. But it would not be the first time thatmeasures taken in an atmosphere of panic hadthe 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 squashthis quality, it would be hard to find a better focusgroup than hackers, because they come closest of any groupI know to embodying it. Closer, probably, thanthe men running our government,who for all their talk of patriotismremind me more of Richelieu or Mazarinthan Thomas Jefferson or George Washington.When you read what the founding fathers had to say forthemselves, they sound more like hackers."The spirit of resistance to government,"Jefferson wrote, "is so valuable on certain occasions, that I wishit always to be kept alive."Imagine an American president saying that today.Like the remarks of an outspoken old grandmother, the sayings ofthe founding fathers have embarrassed generations oftheir less confident successors. They remind us where we come from.They remind us that it is the people who break rules that arethe source of America's wealth and power.Those in a position to impose rules naturally want them to beobeyed. 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, andSteven 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 SteveWozniak.)
