Word: hacker
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Last year's hit movie War-Games and a series of well-publicized computer break-ins have created an image of a teen-age computer hacker that is giving the term a bad name. Many people now think of hackers as pests or perhaps even criminals. But the hackers them selves claim they are getting a bum rap from movies and newspapers. Says Bill Burns, an industrial psychologist and part-time hacker: "We are the victims of a major press screw...
...pranksterism associated with their name, and many feel it is time they set an example for the next generation of computer fans. "It's one thing for a high school kid to show off how he can dial the phone for free," says Brian Harvey, an M.I.T. hacker turned high school teacher. "It's quite another for an adult to go around encouraging schoolkids to steal...
...same topic, a comical film from the sixties shows a harried programmer rushing to run his program before he has to meet his girlfriend. Using the early cumbersome and time-consuming programming system, the "hacker" fails hears a voice telling him to try the new system, in which a programmer interacts directly with the computer to write his code. Using this system, he writes the program easily, it runs perfectly, and in the end he meets the girl...
Exhibits like these are likely to impress the computer hacker, who will feel for the hardships of the early computer programmers and appreciate the p2ogress that has been made. The computer illiterate person, whose dealings with computers are limited to the use of an automatic teller machine, however, may fail to grasp such subtle advances...
...Hackers, says Turkle, are social misfits who construct digital Utopias, hang out in pancake houses and admire the recursive art of M.C. Escher. At M.I.T their nerdy abdication from society is "sport death"-programming for up to 30 hours without sleep before "crashing." Alex, a dedicated hacker, describes it as feeling "totally telepathic with the computer...