English | EN Our parents are all hackers!
Feb 6, 2014
What is the exact definition of a hacker? In the dictionary: “Someone who seeks to get around defenses of software for fun, challenge or fame…”* In a nutshell it is a computer sciences fanatic (geek) who seeks to understand how an information system works and who pulls out his operating system or programs he uses.
But every engineers do the same, it is a mindset, an intellectual curiosity, a way to undertake out environment in order to understand how work devices around us. In order to clarify their passion, some put the adjective “ethical” next to hacker to define their activity. But the core of this topic comes from the fact that there is a misunderstanding between hacker and pirate.
Indeed, when the definition is completed by “… in order to intrude fraudulently into a system or a network”, this last statement is the main feature of a housebreaker rather than a geek.
In the 70’s our parents already sought to understand how new devices worked such as the laundry machine, the VCR or the tape recorder… but they were not meant to be hackers, simply handymen and women who sometimes put a piece of dub tape on a cassette tape to record on it again and again.
It is a lot more different for the next generation. Indeed, since we have lived with hackers and handymen, our children naturally use all these connected devices with an inborn and intuitive sense. Nowadays, our children go through our smartphones, tabs and emails even if they are protected by a password. They have the ability to go intuitively around these protections. Without any mean intended, they run into your intimacy and then become true pirates.
We could say that caterpillars (our parents) transform into chrysalides (our generation) and our children (butterflies) are the real pirates!
*www.larousse.fr/dictionnaires/francais/hacker/38812
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