"It comes down to a common quest
for knowledge," Knowles says. "Why does it do what it does? Who, what,
where, when, why, how?"

Hackers are distinguished by their
hunger for knowledge. They long to see things whole and yearn to know how
things work. Their power derives from the critical knowledge that
leverages other knowledge, their enthusiasm from an adrenaline rush that
comes when they finally make that connection, solve that puzzle.
When the door against which you've
been banging your head suddenly dissolves and you slip effortlessly to the
next level--that's the joy of hacking
they see the world in the image of networks.
We discover in the process of
living life with gusto the boundaries we had better not cross, then learn
how to set limits from within. The risks must be real or the rewards
aren't real.
Hackers at their best are
trekkers who hike the peaks and valleys of the virtual world. The
infrastructure of the world is a puzzle invented to test their mettle.
They fail into failure again and again before failing into success: The
non-pattern of chaotic data suddenly coalesces, the dots connect and
anxiety vanishes.

You see how it works! Bingo! You
understand how it all hangs together.
Technically, it's called "living
proleptically"--when a new possibility breaks into the present with such
compelling power that we have no choice but to live out of that vision as
if it's real. We adopt a new point of reference, and by living as if it
has already happened, we make it real.
He could never see the Big Picture so the details
never connected in a way that made sense."
what distinguishes the best hackers. "The
defining characteristic is they see the Big Picture," he says. "They have
incredible amounts of knowledge and have gone into things at incredibly
deep levels. There is such an immense base of knowledge about competing
technologies,
"Everyone specializes so much,"
Dark Tangent continues, "that it's important to know people in all the
different areas. You have to know what you don't need to know and you have
to know who you can call when you need to know it."
You can make it just
trading tokens of knowledge, the currency of hacking and advance through
'remote learning.' But the Network is not just computers, it's
knowledgeable people connected by computers."
Hackers have little patience with
people who want to be spoon-fed hard-earned knowledge and won't do the
homework.
you have to know where to look."
onnected with a mentor at a critical moment in his career.
That mentor taught him how to look through trash for hours to find the few
significant items that would let him gain entry
more importantly, his mentor taught him by example how to mentor.
being available to provide
information at the right moment to enable a learner to leverage what he
already knows,
defines the ideal coach.
She started asking specific, pointed questions about
networking. That earned her my undivided attention and assistance in
learning."
"You want to create hackers? Don't
tell them how to do this or that. Show them how to discover it for
themselves.
"managing your ego,"
which he does by hanging out with smart friends. That keeps the limits of
his own knowledge in perspective.
"I have
had to recognize that my perception of reality is fundamentally different
than that of people who don't want to know how it really is. You can come
off sounding cynical, but it isn't cynicism, really, it's just that you
have had experiences they haven't and that deeper reality becomes your
point of departure and your point of reference."
The contextual shift through which
our culture is moving is immense. Hackers live in the gray areas that must
exist as we redefine ourselves.
"The only thing the public knows
about hackers is how they defaced some Web page or crashed a server,"
Modify says. "They never hear about the hacker that e-mails an
administrator about the holes in his security or fixes security breaches
for a system administrator."
Sanction comes not from a central government,
however, but from the facts of paradigm change, hierarchical restructuring
and exponential change itself. The evolution of a single global economy
mandates that every business behave as if it's an independent country.
Every enterprise must manage its proprietary data and master the craft of
intelligence and disinformation. Information is currency, and those who
know how to get it and integrate it into meaningful patterns are the new
Masters of the Universe.

Hackers and Painters

Beautiful essay, interesting comparisons.

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The Ethical Hacker Network - Mitnick - The Art Of Intrusion: Ch 1 - Hacking The Casinos For A Million Bucks

Could offer useful insights by analogy from a process standpoint.

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The Art of Hacking – or: the Communication Guerilla as Artistic Practice with New Media

Could be useful if read in conjunction with other hacking articles

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Zen and the Art of Hacking@Everything2.com

VERY interesting post. Redefinition of "hacking" as "understanding" makes it possible to apply the concept across contexts. Resulting ideas are intriguing.

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The fine art of hacking - or, think like a hacker

"You may know HTML very well, but if you are unable to think how to exploit its inner features you are also unable to "hack", because hacking is the ability to make uncommon things with the common tools you have. Be creative."

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