Medieval Hackers [Paperback]

& the word [hacker] itself is quite old. In fact, the earliest record of the noun hacker is medieval: a type of chopping implement was known as a hacker from the 1480s. Evidently, over time the term moved from the implement to the person wielding the implement. Today the grammatical slippage remains, as the hacker hacked the hack is grammatically sound, if stylistically unfortunate. Notably, even in its earliest uses, hacker and hacking referred to necessary disruption. Arboriculture required careful pruning (with a hacker) to remove unwanted branches and cultivation necessitated the regular breaking up of soil and weeds in between rows of a crop (with a hacker). Such practices broke limbs and turf in order to create beneficial new growth. Such physical hacking resembles the actions of computer hackers who claim to identify security exploits (breaking into software) in order to improve computer security, not to weaken it. ~Kathleen E. Kenndy, Medieval Hackers Medieval Hackers calls attention to the use of certain vocabulary terms in the Middle Ages and today: commonness, openness, and freedom. Today we associate this language with computer hackers, some of whom believe that information, from literature to the code that makes up computer programs, should be much more accessible to the general public than it is. In the medieval past these same terms were used by translators of censored texts, including the bible. Only at times in history when texts of enormous cultural importance were kept out of circulation, including our own time, does this vocabulary emerge. Using sources from Anonymouss Fawkes mask to William Tyndales bible prefaces, Medieval Hackers demonstrates why we should watch for this language when it turns up in our media today. This is important work in media archaeology, for as Kennedy writes in this book, the effluorescence of intellectual piracy in our current moment of political and technological revolutions cannot help but draw us l³-