Was the Universe Hacked?
I once worked with a young, brilliant computer programmer. He looked at the IBM System 34 computer that contained several years of his programming genius and commented, “There’s a cathedral in there.”
I understood what he meant although I could not write a line of code even if all the riches of the world were promised. It was a thing of beauty. It functioned as it was intended. It was an expression of his vision, creativity, passion and commitment.
I suspect most coders today and most people who create resonate with that sentiment. They may not liken it to a cathedral because of its religious overtones, but they can sense what he meant by it. Imagine then, their dismay, when they find their beautiful work destroyed by a hacker.
Hacking has several definitions. But several ideas are widely understood in our technological age. It means breaking and entering where you don’t belong. Not just for the fun of doing something you have no right to do, but to mess with whatever you are hacking. It means corrupting something that isn’t yours. It means injecting into someone else’s property, group or system an operation or operations that pervert what was intended. It is intentional destruction of the functionality of an operation. It can mean assuming control and issuing commands to suit the hackers purposes contrary to the owner or designer.
