本文摘要：“The word hacking is like feminism. It has got too much baggage attached.”“hacking这个词就像女权主义。

“The word hacking is like feminism. It has got too much baggage attached.”“hacking这个词就像女权主义。它已附带了过于多包袱。”Of all the things Cal Leeming told me — and he told me a lot of hair-raising stuff about banks’ security flaws — this was one of the things that stayed with me. He does not call himself a hacker, although he almost exactly embodies the stereotype of one. Pale, introverted and with an innate talent for technology, he went to prison for stealing credit card details and now, after turning his life around, runs his own security company. He calls himself a software engineer.凯尔利明(Cal Leeming)曾告诉他我许多关于银行安全漏洞的可怕事情，然而上面这句话让我特别是在难以忘怀。

他未称之为自己是一名黑客——尽管他完全是人们对黑客固有印象的极致化身。面色苍白的他性格内向，享有与生俱来的技术天分。他曾因盗取信用卡资料而被捕。

如今，华丽上前后的他运营着自己的安全性公司。他把自己称作一名软件工程师。Back in the 1950s, when the word “hacking” first emerged in connection with an MIT computer club, it simply meant tinkering with computers and was a badge of honour. But when the press began writing about hackers in the 1980s it was usually in the context of criminality, and that link has stuck. For a while there was an attempt to differentiate between hackers and crackers. “Peaceful, law-abiding coders who built things called themselves hackers. Hackers built things, we said, and crackers broke things,” wrote J M Porup, a hacker-turned-tech-reporter in a piece on website Motherboard. But this distinction is not often made clear.上世纪50年代，“hacking”一词最先经常出现在与麻省理工学院(MIT)一个电脑俱乐部有关的语境。

当时它只是指鼓捣电脑，具有荣誉勋章的涵义。然而，上世纪80年代，当媒体开始报导“hacker”（黑客）时，其语境一般来说是犯罪行为，这种联系早已烧结。有那么一段时间，曾有人企图将黑客和“溃客”(cracker)区分出去。由黑客转型的科技报导记者JM泼洒卢浦(J M Porup)在Motherboard网站上撰文写到：“那些安分、守法、爱人动手做东西的编程者自称为黑客。

我们说道，黑客是做到东西的，而溃客是推倒东西的。”不过，这种区分往往并不被人认真对待。Calling yourself a hacker can even be dangerous, as Corey Thuen, a software developer found out in 2013 while in dispute with a former employer. The Idaho District Court ordered Mr Thuen’s hard drive to be seized and copied for evidence, a fairly serious privacy intrusion and not routine legal practice. Part of the justification was that Mr Thuen described himself as a hacker.正如软件开发者科里休恩(Corey Thuen) 2013年在与前雇员的纠纷中所找到的，自称为黑客甚至可能会有危险性。

爱达荷州地区法院(Idaho District Court)命令充公并拷贝休恩的硬盘作为证据，这是相当严重的褫夺隐私不道德，并不是少见的司法实践中，而其理由之一就是休恩自称为黑客。“The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants — in their own words — are hackers,” wrote the judge. “By labelling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act.”法官写到：“法庭作出要求的关键要点，源于被告——用其自己的话来说——是黑客的涉及证据。通过以这种方式标榜自身，他们实质上已宣告自己享有适当的电脑技能和意图，需要在公开发表公布涉及代码的同时，隐蔽自己在这一行动中所扮演着的角色。”The case was eventually settled out of court, but the idea that calling yourself a hacker implies some kind of evil intent remains troubling. Opinions were mixed when I asked the FT’s Tech Meets Money Facebook group about hacking. “It implies fast and cheap with disregard to convention or rules. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes not so much,” said Daniel Priestley, a London-based entrepreneur.该案最后以庭外和解收场，然而那种自称为黑客就说明了着某种罪恶意图的观念仍然令人不安。

当我在英国《金融时报》“当高科技遇上资本”(Tech Meets Money)的Facebook群里问及有关hacking的问题时，人们的观点各不相同。伦敦企业家丹尼尔普里斯特利(Daniel Priestley)回应：“这个词暗示着快捷和廉价，漠视惯例或规则。有时候这很不俗，有时候就不好了。

”Above all, “hacker” is now a confusing term. Everyone, from a member of a Russian criminal gang stealing credit cards to online political activists and the 14-year-old kid who tinkers with computers, is a “hacker”, yet each one of them has very different motivations and resources.最重要的是，如今“黑客”是个令人欺骗的词汇。从盗取信用卡资料的俄罗斯犯罪团伙成员，到网上政治活动人士，以及鼓捣电脑的14岁孩子，都是“黑客”，然而他们每个人行事的动机和手头享有的资源十分有所不同。At the same time companies hold “hack days” and “hackathons” during which they brainstorm business ideas, women’s magazine hints and tips column have been rebranded as “lifehacks” and the people who used to be called advertising executives refer to themselves as “growth hackers”.与此同时，企业举行“黑客日”(hack day)和“黑客泊”(hackathon)之类的活动，其间利用“头脑风暴”捕猎业务上的创新；女性杂志的提醒技巧栏目已被新的纸盒为“生活密码”(lifehack)；而那些过去被称作广告主管的人如今自称为“快速增长黑客”(growth hacker)。Catherine Bracy, director of community organising at Code for America, even argues anyone can be a “civic hacker”, helping governments to re-energise democracy. Under this definition Benjamin Franklin, inventor and one of the founding fathers of the US (who never filed a patent because he believed all human knowledge should be free) is an archetypal hacker — even though the word had something to do with cutting down trees in his day. The term is maddeningly imprecise.“为美国编程”(Code for America)社区的组织总监凯瑟琳布雷西(Catherine Bracy)甚至明确提出，任何人都可以沦为“公民黑客”，协助政府为民主体制新的流经活力。

按照这样的定义，发明家、美国的开国先贤之一本杰明富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)就是典型的黑客——尽管在他的年代这个词的含义和砍树有关。他从不申请专利，因为他指出人类所有的科学知识都应当免费。简言之，“黑客”一词的模棱两可程度令人发怒。

The battle over the word mirrors the behind-the-scenes struggle of the internet, between those who push the boundaries of what is possible and the institutions that want to secure cyber space for their own purposes.环绕这个词的斗争折射出了互联网幕后的斗争：一方是那些致力扩展可能性界限的人，另一方是出于自身目的想保证网络空间安全性的机构。Hackers are a problem because, if anything, they are a bit too democratic for many people’s taste. In her essay on Phreaks, Hackers and Trolls, academic Gabriella Coleman likens internet disrupters to the tricksters of mythology. Folkloric figures like Loki and Anansi are the agents of change, but they are also unsettling, frightening, even grotesque. Hackers will take technology forward but they may not be thanked for it.黑客之所以沦为问题，是因为（如果说有任何不长时间的话）他们对许多人来说有点民主过头了，令人无法拒绝接受。

在取名为《电脑怪人、黑客和山精》(Phreaks, Hackers and Trolls)的论文中，学者加布里埃拉科尔曼(Gabriella Coleman)将互联网颠覆者转换成神话里恶作剧的妖精。洛基(Loki)和阿南西(Anansi)这类民间故事中的人物是变革的推动者，但他们也令人不安、让人惧怕、甚至怪异凶恶。黑客不会增进技术变革，但他们或许会因此受到感激。

For example, hackers were some of the earliest believers in open-source software — making computer code freely available to be viewed and improved on by anyone. This used to be a troubling concept for companies, which had based businesses on protecting their intellectual property.比如，有些黑客是开源软件的最先信徒，这类软件免费公开发表源代码，让任何人可以查阅并做出改良。过去这对企业是个令人不安的概念，因为这些企业的业务创建在维护知识产权的基础上。Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux open source operating system, was for a time the bête noire of business. He was described in 2001 as “cancer” by Microsoft’s then chief Steve Ballmer. But a recent survey found some 78 per cent of companies who had responded ran at least part of their business on open source software. Even Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, has said he “loves Linux” and is moving part of the company’s Azure platform to run on the system. There is a sense of karma about this but 15 years can be a long time to wait for acceptance.开源操作系统Linux的发明人林纳斯托瓦兹(Linus Torvalds)一度被商界视作“眼中钉”。

2001年他曾被时任微软公司(Microsoft)首席执行官史蒂夫鲍尔默(Steve Ballmer)称作“癌症”。然而，最近一次调查指出，对此调查的企业中，约78%在开源软件上运营最少一部分业务。就连微软公司新任首席执行官萨蒂亚纳德拉(Satya Nadella)也回应“青睐Linux”，正在将微软公司Azure平台的一部分迁入到Linux系统上运营。这种峰回路转有点宿命感觉，不过15年等来的拒绝接受，时间上有可能宽了一点。

It is not just Linux that is worthy of redemption. Today Cal Leeming is many things: a businessman, a film-maker, a devoted father and a charity volunteer. A loaded word like “hacker” risks obscuring these other facets. It is no wonder he doesn’t use it.有一点救赎的某种程度是Linux。今天，凯尔利明现职多重身份：商人、电影制片人、全心投入的父亲以及慈善事业的志愿者。

而类似于“黑客”这样含义丰富的词汇有可能掩饰上述其他方面的身份。不该他不用于这个称号。

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