​ In addition to the qualitative measurements for spatial influence, quantitative data will also be incorporated in order to draw meaning from documents. This section aims to analyze significant bodies of text and use that information to look for particular points of interest regarding hacker culture and perceptions of hacker culture to society.
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The first piece is a well known document written by a computer security worker after being arrested for his involvement in hacker activities. Published by the hacker magazine 2600, the "Hacker Manifesto" is a commonly quoted paper that is a good example of hacker ethics and mindset. It focuses on the more criminal aspects of hacker culture, and it shows when put through data mining software that highlights commonly repeated words.
It's important to note that he wrote this after his arrest, which could explain the anger and criminal leanings in his writing, but even then there is a large emphasis on being a youth movement and being misunderstood. Looking at this piece of writing, it seems important to look for the perception of hackers as misunderstood or as computer criminals. The meaning of the word from hobbyist or programmer to cyber criminal is mostly due to the social climate of the time. Government legislature started to look into hacker clubs and hacking activity, which viewed them as threats to security and private information.
This is the Wordle for the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Written in the same year as the Hacker Manifesto was published, they represent the two different approaches to hacker ideals and culture. The Hacker Manifesto has a focus on "criminal" and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act obviously focuses on the illegal activities of hackers. This Wordle does emphasize "foreign," "financial, and "information." Hackers believe in freedom of information, but this conflicts with the law at the time. Overall, these documents did put the questionable legal activity of hacker culture into the public eye.
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This is in contrast to the hacker groups from the maps page, many of which inspired companies like Apple, IBM, and Google. These specific documents show the definition split of hacker, from a combination of programmer, hobbyist and computer criminal to computer criminal. Using Google Ngrams, I want to see the correlation of the phrase "hacker" and "computer criminal" over time, to see if there is a correlation between the phrases.
Text Analysis of Significant Documents
This graph makes the definition of "hacker" pretty obvious. In the same year the Hacker Manifesto and the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act were introduced to the general public, the word "hacker" started spiking, entering the public lexicon. The phrase "computer criminal" and "computer crime" remain the same, which suggests that they could be replaced by the word "hacker." This is the popular incarnation of the term hacker for the general public, but it is not the only element of hacker culture to look for. Even if the public has the word "hacker" introduced into their lexicon, the ideals and ethics these groups created could still slip into society through our increased integration with computers in our everyday lives.
The Influence of Hacker Culture in Society
Alex Lederer
HIST 390
Text Tools made by http://www.wordle.net/ and http://books.google.com/ngrams
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Blankenship, Loyd
1986 The Hacker Manifesto. Phack e-Zine. Rehosted at ​
http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/manifesto.html
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Computer Fraud and Abuse Act