#Hacking defined

When I started programming, over thirty years ago, a hack, to the people we followed, was a custom-written code snippet that would either fix a program, or add a new feature. It had a positive connotation to me as a six-year-old as my father and I hacked our Interact with our homemade binary input panel. I understood the simplicity of the machine, even then. While we could easily destroy, there was an art and a challenge in improving and improvising. Hacking had become, in effect, the act of creatively engineering, and testing repeatedly for the goal of success. We learned from our failed attempts and improvised. This process has always existed, given the act of hacking has created complex technologies like aviation, aerospace, advanced medicine, and personal computers to name a few.

Mainstream media portrayals of hacking however are almost always negative, so society believes hacking is inherently malevolent; this contradicts everything I have ever learned. Misunderstood by the masses due to the mainstream media's portrayal, the cultural wide-felt concept of hacking has evolved beyond computers to simply attempting non-standard methods of creative problem solving to derive a solution to a complex or often seemingly impossible issue or situation.

I had a physics professor who, profoundly, stated, “Everything is either directly or indirectly applicable to everything else.” This observation supports a core belief: if you engage in hacking, if you look at something in a different light or from a different perspective than everyone else, then new potential exists in understanding, simply by applying new insight or applicable knowledge. If your motives are good and you are ethically sound, this is never a bad practice. It is a practice however, and without practice and creativity, it's simply a monotonous routine without insight.

For example, bicycle engineers hacking their craft took to the skies on a whim, and brought the future of travel to new heights, quite literally. Scientists sent animals into space, not knowing what would happen, and yet they opened the door to an intellectual laboratory free of the limitations of our gravity-bound existence. When present-day doctors engineer viruses to use as delivery systems for cures, a definitely fear-instilling non-standard approach, amazing new discoveries in medicine are developed that have the potential to save billions of lives.  When a couple of college dropouts in a garage in California threw together a few electronic components to make a new kind of computer, they started a revolution that put computing power in billions of homes and schools worldwide. Their company, Apple, now puts computers in everyone’s hands, and most people can’t fathom what they’re holding, nor would they believe that it was created as a result of hacking.

My client for the current late night project I mentioned makes machines for a variety of applications, including repairing offshore oil delivery systems and sensitive systems in nuclear power plants. Too look at this positively, by hacking their website, I am better understanding the shortcomings of the system I am to protect and improve. If my clients’ web applications can better recognize and target their customers, this will ultimately allow them to improve usage of their machines, which in their industries, are safer than the alternative; not only for the operators, but also the environment. This means hacking can, by extension, do things like lead to fewer petroleum pollutants in seafood and connect equipment with operators enabling faster repairs in failing nuclear plants. There are definitely positive benefits to hacking that are overlooked; benefits that are often buried by negative stories. If we share the positive aspects of our efforts, we can cumulatively drown out the negative.

For most hackers, people who embody the concept of hacking, it is the way of life. By providing innovation through experimentation, ethical hackers are doing a positive service for humanity. Hacking is no more intrinsically mischievous than curiosity itself, and instead, it affords the hacker an unorthodox perspective in complicated, sometimes seemingly impossible situations. While people can do malicious things on computers, it doesn’t mean we should quash curiosity, nor should we resign a word embraced by many to a meaning that has long been denigrated. We should incorporate the art of hacking into our workflows, redefine the word hacking itself to mean something positive, and excel in observing from outside perspectives. It is our creativity and insight that improves the system.