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MIT President Tells Grads To 'Hack the World'

Posted by timothy on from the but-gently dept.

theodp writes "On Friday, MIT President L. Rafael Reif exhorted grads to 'hack the world until you make the world a little more like MIT'. A rather ironic choice of words, since 'hack the world' is precisely what others said Aaron Swartz was trying to do in his fateful run-in with MIT. President Reif presumably received an 'Incomplete' this semester for the promised time-is-of-the-essence review of MIT's involvement in the events that preceded Swartz's suicide last January. By the way, it wasn't so long ago that 2013 commencement speaker Drew Houston and Aaron Swartz were both welcome speakers at MIT."

11 of 86 comments (clear)

  1. sounds familiar... by Tastecicles · · Score: 3, Insightful

    ...Line from "Hackers", repeated several times:

    "Hack the planet!"

    --
    Operation Guillotine is in effect.
    1. Re:sounds familiar... by Eightbitgnosis · · Score: 2

      They're TRASHING our rights, man! They're TRASHING the flow of data! They're TRASHING! TRASHING! TRASHING!

    2. Re:sounds familiar... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Actually - some female hackers look better than Jolie. The problem is yours - you spent so much of your youth watching the television, and being indoctrinated to prefer women who look like Jolie. Those of us who aren't totally indoctrinated prefer real women, who aren't draped in (tens?) thousands of dollars worth of designer clothes, hundreds of dollars worth of make up, carefully airbrushed in every image, blah, blah, blah.

      You want Jolie? Go get her. Personally, I wouldn't follow her around the corner to get a better look at her.

  2. Go on, kids, hack the world! by fuzzyfuzzyfungus · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Go ahead and hack the world. If you get caught, I never said that and we've never heard of you.

  3. Hack the World except... by Virtucon · · Score: 2

    For our materials that are paid for by US tax dollars and put behind systems to deliberately make you get at it through our multiple gates and measures or any other thing we make money on.

    --
    Harrison's Postulate - "For every action there is an equal and opposite criticism"
  4. Pesky Kids by sanman2 · · Score: 4, Funny

    ... I would've gotten away with it too, if it weren't for those pesky kids!

  5. MIT Hacks by e4liberty · · Score: 5, Informative

    At MIT, the word "hack" means something very specific, and not criminal or unethical. It is a impressive, creative, and clever achievement. From http://hacks.mit.edu/ The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call "cracking").

    1. Re:MIT Hacks by divisionbyzero · · Score: 3, Insightful

      At MIT, the word "hack" means something very specific, and not criminal or unethical. It is a impressive, creative, and clever achievement.

      From http://hacks.mit.edu/

      The word hack at MIT usually refers to a clever, benign, and "ethical" prank or practical joke, which is both challenging for the perpetrators and amusing to the MIT community (and sometimes even the rest of the world!). Note that this has nothing to do with computer (or phone) hacking (which we call "cracking").

      So, the president of MIT was urging MIT students to pull clever practical jokes? That's stupid or he meant something different. Presumably he meant "hack" in the same way that people who have been actually involved with computers understand it: exploring the possibilities of a system (often including some that the inventor never intended) for the sake of discovery and in some cases using those discoveries to create unique and innovative outcomes. I get that you are trying to make a distinction between "hacking" and "cracking" but "hacking" has a meaning that transcends the special case of practical jokes that are a part of MIT folklore and if the president of MIT did not have the broader meaning in mind, then his comments are almost comical.

    2. Re:MIT Hacks by VortexCortex · · Score: 2

      You don't get to define hack. Culture does. Don't get me wrong. I'm a hacker in the original classic sense. However, Science, or even just Progress is about compression. Compression is the ability to Sense observation Decide the likely outcome based on prior observation, and Act with predictive powers given by the prior observation. If you and I have different dictionaries, we have less progress; More wasted time building a conversion table, clarifying the symbolics of communication. When faced with a more broadly adopted definition it is not only foolish, but against progress to not adopt the new meaning.

      TL;DR: The media Hacked your term for Hacking. Call yourself a Hacker and you'll be rightly considered a Hack.

    3. Re:MIT Hacks by AthanasiusKircher · · Score: 2

      You don't get to define hack. Culture does.

      Absolutely. MIT doesn't get to define "hack" for the culture at large. However, MIT does have its own distinctive culture, and it has its own sets of terms, phrases, and special meanings (just like Slashdot).

      MIT does get to define what the term "hack" means when used on its own campus, as long as its own communal culture agrees on it.

      And thus, when an MIT president speaks to MIT students, he might be expected to use the term "hack" in that sense. There is nothing inherently "wrong" with this, nor is there anything wrong with someone trying to explain this distinctive culture and terminology to others... others can then freely choose whether or not this unusual meaning is of any use to them or not.

      This, by the way, is exactly how meanings of words evolve over time. If everyone always used words in the same way, word meanings would never change. History shows they do. That's a fact of life.

      If you and I have different dictionaries, we have less progress; More wasted time building a conversion table, clarifying the symbolics of communication.

      Anyone who has spent time trying to translate something with subtle meaning from one language to another realizes that each language has a distinctive set of circumscribed and interconnecting meanings that are difficult to render in another language. In essence, different languages actually can produce different ideas and different knowledge, just because of the way words connect to each other.

      There are certainly benefits to a universal standard for communication. But there are also benefits from letting smaller groups develop their own distinctive cultures and even distinctive languages, because by doing so, they may end up making connections, distinctions,and even discoveries not possible (or at least unlikely) in another language.

    4. Re:MIT Hacks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Informative

      Yes, they have. Most MIT "hackers" are very respectful of property and equipment, we just like to play with it.

      For example: when visiting various MIT buildings and roofs somewhat illicitly one evening, we noticed that some very clumsy fools had damaged the lock leading to one of the MIT rooftops. The next week, we showed up with tools and parts and repaired the lock, so that there was no sign of damage.

      MIT authorities, in turn, treated our hacks fairly kindly. When we turned the "assembled underwater to practice space manufacture" cube hanging in the lobby of MIT's main entrance into a six-sided die late one night, we took much longer than planned. And when we scurried off for a celebratory drink at the allnight coffeehouse, someone realized they'd left the blueprints in the lobby. When they retrieved the blueprints, it was apparent the campus police had found them and had previously been leaving us alone while we worked, because they had an added signature from the head of the head of campus police.

      We were *very* careful about hacking. The points of good hacks were technological accomplishment, and *surprise*, not theft or destruction. A hack that left someone glad you'd done it was considered ideal, such as the police car or telephone booths on the Great Dome.