Objects in Flux - RMIT Research Repository - RMIT University

Objects in Flux
9/ Power tool drag racing is a compet-
itive sport in which participants race
modified consumer power tools (often
belt sanders), http://www.powertool-
dragraces.com/ accessed 12 Febru-
ary 2010; see also ‘SCREEN GRAB, A
Sport for Purists: Belt-Sander Races’
(Pollak, 2000).
10/ Vacuum cleaner modifications are
often centred around robotic vacuum
cleaners such as the Roomba from
iRobot Corp (Robischon, 2007).
11/ Public meetings range from the
industry led Black Hat conference to
the community organised DEF CON
convention, http://www.blackhat.
com/index.html accessed 14 March
2010; http://www.defcon.org/ ac-
cessed 14 March 2010.
12/ Similar efforts by prominent fig-
ures in the American hot-rod commu-
nity sought to distance car customisa-
tion from the socially maligned illegal
street racing (Lucsko, 1998).
56
hackers at MIT persistently challenged university systems, particularly
when these systems were designed to prevent access to information
or equipment: ‘to a hacker, a closed door is an insult, and a locked
door is an outrage. Just as information should be clearly and elegantly
transported within a computer, and just as software should be freely
disseminated, hackers believed people should be allowed access to
files or tools which might promote the hacker quest to find out and improve
the way the world works. When a hacker needed something to
help him create, explore, or fix, he did not bother with such ridiculous
concepts as property rights’ (1984).
From this account it is clear that ‘hacking’ and ‘cracking’ share similar
processes, if not a common ethical framework. Further complicating
matters, the ‘adolescent males’ whom Raymond seeks to define as
‘crackers’ typically use the terms ‘hacker’ and ‘hacking’ to describe
who they are and what they do. In addition, the practice of cracking/
hacking is not solely the domain of adolescent males; it is a multi-faceted
activity with prominent social and commercial dimensions. This
diversity of practice is evident in the numerous public conventions
organised around the cracking/hacking theme. 11
The distinction Raymond and Stallman endeavour to make between
‘hacking’ and ‘cracking’ can be seen as an attempt to distance hacking
from the public hysteria that generally surrounds acts of computer
trespass. 12 In discussing such hysteria Andrew Ross claims that
hackers have been ‘categorized as “enemies of the state” in order to
help rationalize a general law-and-order clampdown on free and open
information exchange’ (2000, p. 254). Ross states that positioning
hacking as a ‘social menace’ ‘is central to the ongoing attempts to
rewrite property law in order to contain the effects of the new information
technologies that … have transformed the way in which modern
power is exercised and maintained’ (2000, p. 254).
Ross’s claims are particularly significant when we consider hacking’s
connection to the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement.
Although hacking pre-dates FOSS by more than a decade, these two
practices are strongly intertwined. Raymond goes as far as stating that
‘Today, “the hacker community” and “open-source developers” are
two descriptions for what is essentially the same culture and popula-