Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!ucbvax!ucsfcgl!cca.ucsf.edu!dick From: dick@cca.ucsf.edu (Dick Karpinski) Newsgroups: comp.org.eff.talk Subject: Re: hacker = computer criminal Summary: Terminological, not semantic problem Message-ID: <3189@ucsfcca.ucsf.edu> Date: 8 Oct 90 01:54:20 GMT References: <4761@bone25.UUCP> <69148@lll-winken.LLNL.GOV> <20225:Oct319:48:5690@kramden.acf.nyu.edu> <1990Oct4.152821.3150@cbnews.att.com> Reply-To: dick@ccnext.UUCP (Dick Karpinski) Distribution: na Organization: University of California, San Francisco Lines: 28 In article bzs@world.std.com (Barry Shein) writes: > >... The whole thing is a semantic minefield. > >I realize a lot of people have negative knee-jerk reactions to this >sort of thing, but something we may have to strive to do is take back >the language. If they take it from you they've got you. > >Look at what happened to the Hacker's Conference a few years back, the >whole negative incident was purely semantic. The conference was named >back when "hacker" had a positive connotation, and never changed in >spirit. But the word did, so suddenly some people read it as some sort >of terrorist's meeting or something, and there was some trouble. > >Purely semantic. May I gently suggest that we avoid calling these redefinition-of-terms difficulties "semantic" and use "terminological" instead. Semantics has to do with the meanings, and the conflict between two rather incompatible definitions of "hacker" is over their different meanings but I think the emphasis is wrong. The problem is that one term is being used in two different ways, thus neither spelling nor pronunciation gives guidance to the receiver of the term with two meanings. Besides, this change in usage benefits one of my favorite rewordings used to indicate a liar: "He's committed a terminological inexactitude." Dick