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This raises another question: how long are we going to fight the losing battle of reclaiming the word "hacker" from its current shady connotation? After reading
by startingup 19y ago
This raises another question: how long are we going to fight the losing battle of reclaiming the word "hacker" from its current shady connotation? After reading news like this, I would be really ashamed to call myself a "hacker".
Note that I am making a purely linguistic point here. The popular culture has pretty well defined the word already .... think about explaining to your non-technical friend that you were reading about the epilepsy episode in Hacker News!
This reminds me of another word, "liberal", which in America means someone who advocates what would be classically considered illiberal economics (government intervention in the economy, protectionism and so on). The Economist still refuses to accept the American hijacking of a fine word, but somehow I don't believe a Ron Paul would ever want to be called a "liberal", which he actually is in the classical sense.
As a counter-example, J.K. Rowling seems to have bestowed a different meaning to the word "witch", equating it with "wizard". And then I realize PG was originally a Brit, so may be the Brits can "take English back" :-)
- sfg 19y agoThe fact you will not use the word due to shame makes me think of Gresham's law which states: "Money overvalued by the State will drive money undervalued by the State out of circulation.",(from Wikipedia). In this case the bad association the word brings pushes its use beyond the comfort zone of those whose intentions are good. Also, the positive image of good hackers is no doubt appealing to the more nefarious computer users and so only increases there desire to use the label. Combine these pressures with the fact that the negative version has already captured the popular mind and it would seem you might be right that the battle is lost.