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On Hacking - Richard Stallman

On Hacking - Richard Stallman: In June 2000, while visiting Korea, I did a fun hack that clearly illustrates the original and true meaning of the word "hacker".
I went to lunch with some GNU fans, and was sitting down to eat some tteokbokki (*), when a waitress set down six chopsticks right in front of me. It occurred to me that perhaps these were meant for three people, but it was more amusing to imagine that I was supposed to use all six. I did not know any way to do that, so I realized that if I could come up with a way, it would be a hack. I started thinking. After a few seconds I had an idea.

First I used my left hand to put three chopsticks into my right hand. That was not so hard, though I had to figure out where to put them so that I could control them individually. Then I used my right hand to put the other three chopsticks into my left hand. That was hard, since I had to keep the three chopsticks already in my right hand from falling out. After a couple of tries I got it done.

Then I had to figure out how to use the six chopsticks. That was harder. I did not manage well with the left hand, but I succeeded in manipulating all three in the right hand. After a couple of minutes of practice and adjustment, I managed to pick up a piece of food using three sticks converging on it from three different directions, and put it in my mouth.

It didn't become easy—for practical purposes, using two chopsticks is completely superior. But precisely because using three in one hand is hard and ordinarily never thought of, it has "hack value", as my lunch companions immediately recognized. Playfully doing something difficult, whether useful or not, that is hacking.

I later told the Korea story to a friend in Boston, who proceded to put four chopsticks in one hand and use them as two pairs—picking up two different pieces of food at once, one with each pair. He had topped my hack. Was his action, too, a hack? I think so. Is he therefore a hacker? That depends on how much he likes to hack.

The hacking community developed at MIT and some other universities in the 1960s and 1970s. Hacking included a wide range of activities, from writing software, to practical jokes, to exploring the roofs and tunnels of the MIT campus. Other activities, performed far from MIT and far from computers, also fit hackers' idea of what hacking means: for instance, I think the controversial 1950s "musical piece" by John Cage, 4'33" (****), is more of a hack than a musical composition. The palindromic three-part piece written by Guillaume de Machaut in the 1300s, "Ma Fin Est Mon Commencement", was also a good hack, even better because it also sounds good as music. Puck appreciated hack value.

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