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Comment by pius | Hacker News Reader

This is a completely incorrect conclusion. As I wrote on the blog:

Actually, you’re the one who’s mistaken — history does support the benign view. As you note, the term hacker dates back even to the Tech Model Railroad Club. The term was generalized to include all sorts of neat but benign tomfoolery (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIT_hack) including white hat phone phreaking. At MIT, there’s definitely always been a sense that hacking has a code of ethics and that people who do bad things under the guise of hacking aren’t hacking at all.

The Tech’s 1963 reference to malicious phreakers as hackers is the same as modern day references to crackers as hackers: a mistake.

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The secondary source of wikipedia doesn’t count as evidence, relying upon third-hand anecdotes like the wikipedia article does is incredibly poor academic form on wikipedia's part (notice the lack of citations to primary evidence).

While you’re right term “hack” was used in a “positive” sense with regards to model railways, “hack” in the context of computers wasn’t. In the earliest days at TMRC it was used with regards to gain unauthorized access on MIT’s computer systems (although with less negative connotations then it has now). The modern geek “hacker” sense which is in common use now of an elite programmer didn’t come around until much later.

Saying that, if you read the descriptions of "hacks" given in the wikipedia article most of them would now be considered "black hat" under modern definitions anyway.

If you want to show I'm wrong, show me the evidence and I'll accept it. But while all of the primary evidence is pointing the other way I'm not going to let personal beliefs influence my opinion. Just because lots of people are wrong together it doesn't make them right.

"All of the primary evidence" is what, one person speaking pejoratively about a hacker in a student newspaper article? If you're gonna take a contrarian view, you should probably show some pretty solid evidence to justify it.

The problem is that there are _no_ recorded sources showing "computer hacking" in a non-"black hat" sense until more than a decade after the student newspaper article.

I'm sorry, I didn't mean to present that in a way that would make you feel like you need to get defensive.

I was trying to use Wikipedia for your benefit. My opinion is actually based on primary sources from my time at MIT (e.g. alums who were actually students back then).

Pontificating about my "poor academic form" is harsh, unnecessary, and, frankly, it doesn't suit you; not when your argument -- that you know the first hackers were black hats because you found some article in The Tech where someone said something negative about one -- lacks any semblance of validity to begin with.

Given that you're the one with a contrarian opinion, you should present strong evidence if you don't want people to be skeptical. The burden of proof is with you on this one.

Actually I didn't find it, my post is based upon research by Fred Shapiro (editor of the The Yale Book of Quotations, and a highly respected language researcher), but that's beside the point.

It's pretty standard practice in etymology to research the history of a word by finding all the earliest usages of it, and that's what Fred did in this case. And the early usages pointed towards a "black hat" usage.

Etymologists don't normally use evidence based upon individual memory due to people being very bad at remember exact word usages from decades ago. A few years ago I did some work for the Oxford English Dictionary and while they would use people's memory to guide them to potential recorded sources of evidence, they wouldn't use someones memory alone due to the problems inherent with it.

Especially in a emotionally charged issues like this one where people are likely to "want" to remember things being a certain way.

btw, the poor academic form thing was about wikipedia (from whom which we would expect a reasonale academic form), not you personally, sorry if it came across that way.

That's cool -- my bad if I came off rude to you in anyway. I just don't agree with your conclusion.

I know I might be wrong, and that's one of the reasons I made the post. Maybe some who was in the TMRC in the 60s might read it and realize they have a diary or minutes from a meeting from that time which provides evidence for a non-"black hat" meaning.

But as probably one of the few people in the world who has credentials in both etymology and geekiness (I was president of a student computer society :P), I feel like it's my duty to let the world know what the current evidence points to :-)

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