“The word hacking is like feminism. It has got too much baggage attached.”

“hacking这个词就像女权主义。它已附带了太多包袱。”

Of all the things Cal Leeming told me — and he told me a lot of hair-raising stuff about banks’ security flaws — this was one of the things that stayed with me. He does not call himself a hacker, although he almost exactly embodies the stereotype of one. Pale, introverted and with an innate talent for technology, he went to prison for stealing credit card details and now, after turning his life around, runs his own security company. He calls himself a software engineer.

凯尔•利明(Cal Leeming)曾告诉我许多关于银行安全漏洞的可怕事情，然而上面这句话让我尤其难以忘怀。他并未称自己是一名黑客——尽管他几乎是人们对黑客固有印象的完美化身。面色苍白的他性格内向，拥有与生俱来的技术天分。他曾因窃取信用卡资料而入狱。如今，华丽转身后的他运营着自己的安全公司。他把自己称为一名软件工程师。

Back in the 1950s, when the word “hacking” first emerged in connection with an MIT computer club, it simply meant tinkering with computers and was a badge of honour. But when the press began writing about hackers in the 1980s it was usually in the context of criminality, and that link has stuck. For a while there was an attempt to differentiate between hackers and crackers. “Peaceful, law-abiding coders who built things called themselves hackers. Hackers built things, we said, and crackers broke things,” wrote J M Porup, a hacker-turned-tech-reporter in a piece on website Motherboard. But this distinction is not often made clear.

上世纪50年代，“hacking”一词最早出现在与麻省理工学院(MIT)一个电脑俱乐部有关的语境。当时它只是指鼓捣电脑，带有荣誉勋章的涵义。然而，上世纪80年代，当媒体开始报道“hacker”（黑客）时，其语境通常是犯罪行为，这种联系已经固化。有那么一段时间，曾有人企图将黑客和“溃客”(cracker)区分开来。由黑客转型的科技报道记者J•M•泼卢浦(J M Porup)在Motherboard网站上撰文写道：“那些安分、守法、爱动手做东西的编程者自称黑客。我们说，黑客是做东西的，而溃客是砸烂东西的。”不过，这种区分往往并不被人认真对待。

Calling yourself a hacker can even be dangerous, as Corey Thuen, a software developer found out in 2013 while in dispute with a former employer. The Idaho District Court ordered Mr Thuen’s hard drive to be seized and copied for evidence, a fairly serious privacy intrusion and not routine legal practice. Part of the justification was that Mr Thuen described himself as a hacker.

正如软件开发者科里•休恩(Corey Thuen) 2013年在与前雇主的纠纷中所发现的，自称黑客甚至可能会有危险。爱达荷州地区法院(Idaho District Court)下令没收并复制休恩的硬盘作为证据，这是相当严重的剥夺隐私行为，并不是常见的司法实践，而其理由之一就是休恩自称黑客。

“The tipping point for the Court comes from evidence that the defendants — in their own words — are hackers,” wrote the judge. “By labelling themselves this way, they have essentially announced that they have the necessary computer skills and intent to simultaneously release the code publicly and conceal their role in that act.”

法官写道：“法庭做出决定的关键要点，源自被告——用其自己的话来说——是黑客的相关证据。通过以这种方式标榜自身，他们实质上已宣布自己拥有必要的电脑技能和意图，能够在公开发布相关代码的同时，隐藏自己在这一行动中所扮演的角色。”

The case was eventually settled out of court, but the idea that calling yourself a hacker implies some kind of evil intent remains troubling. Opinions were mixed when I asked the FT’s Tech Meets Money Facebook group about hacking. “It implies fast and cheap with disregard to convention or rules. Sometimes that’s good and sometimes not so much,” said Daniel Priestley, a London-based entrepreneur.

该案最终以庭外和解收场，然而那种自称黑客就隐含着某种罪恶意图的观念依然令人不安。当我在英国《金融时报》“当高科技遇到资本”(Tech Meets Money)的Facebook群里问到有关hacking的问题时，人们的看法各不相同。伦敦企业家丹尼尔•普里斯特利(Daniel Priestley)表示：“这个词暗示着快捷和廉价，无视惯例或规则。有时候这很不错，有时候就不太好了。”

Above all, “hacker” is now a confusing term. Everyone, from a member of a Russian criminal gang stealing credit cards to online political activists and the 14-year-old kid who tinkers with computers, is a “hacker”, yet each one of them has very different motivations and resources.

最重要的是，如今“黑客”是个令人迷惑的词汇。从窃取信用卡资料的俄罗斯犯罪团伙成员，到网上政治活动人士，以及鼓捣电脑的14岁孩子，都是“黑客”，然而他们每个人做事的动机和手头拥有的资源极为不同。

At the same time companies hold “hack days” and “hackathons” during which they brainstorm business ideas, women’s magazine hints and tips column have been rebranded as “lifehacks” and the people who used to be called advertising executives refer to themselves as “growth hackers”.

与此同时，企业举办“黑客日”(hack day)和“黑客松”(hackathon)之类的活动，其间借助“头脑风暴”捕捉业务上的创意；女性杂志的提示技巧栏目已被重新包装为“生活破解”(lifehack)；而那些过去被称为广告主管的人如今自称“增长黑客”(growth hacker)。

Catherine Bracy, director of community organising at Code for America, even argues anyone can be a “civic hacker”, helping governments to re-energise democracy. Under this definition Benjamin Franklin, inventor and one of the founding fathers of the US (who never filed a patent because he believed all human knowledge should be free) is an archetypal hacker — even though the word had something to do with cutting down trees in his day. The term is maddeningly imprecise.

“为美国编程”(Code for America)社区组织总监凯瑟琳•布雷西(Catherine Bracy)甚至提出，任何人都可以成为“公民黑客”，帮助政府为民主体制重新注入活力。按照这样的定义，发明家、美国的开国先贤之一本杰明•富兰克林(Benjamin Franklin)就是典型的黑客——尽管在他的年代这个词的含义和砍树有关。他从来不申请专利，因为他认为人类所有的知识都应该免费。简言之，“黑客”一词的含糊程度令人发狂。

The battle over the word mirrors the behind-the-scenes struggle of the internet, between those who push the boundaries of what is possible and the institutions that want to secure cyber space for their own purposes.

围绕这个词的斗争折射出了互联网幕后的斗争：一方是那些致力拓展可能性界限的人，另一方是出于自身目的想要确保网络空间安全的机构。

Hackers are a problem because, if anything, they are a bit too democratic for many people’s taste. In her essay on Phreaks, Hackers and Trolls, academic Gabriella Coleman likens internet disrupters to the tricksters of mythology. Folkloric figures like Loki and Anansi are the agents of change, but they are also unsettling, frightening, even grotesque. Hackers will take technology forward but they may not be thanked for it.

黑客之所以成为问题，是因为（如果说有任何不正常的话）他们对许多人来说有点民主过头了，令人难以接受。在名为《电脑怪人、黑客和山精》(Phreaks, Hackers and Trolls)的论文中，学者加布里埃拉•科尔曼(Gabriella Coleman)将互联网颠覆者类比成神话里恶作剧的妖精。洛基(Loki)和阿南西(Anansi)这类民间故事中的人物是变革的推动者，但他们也令人不安、让人害怕、甚至古怪狰狞。黑客会促进技术进步，但他们也许不会因此受到感谢。

For example, hackers were some of the earliest believers in open-source software — making computer code freely available to be viewed and improved on by anyone. This used to be a troubling concept for companies, which had based businesses on protecting their intellectual property.

比如，有些黑客是开源软件的最早信徒，这类软件免费公开源代码，让任何人可以查看并作出改进。过去这对企业是个令人不安的概念，因为这些企业的业务建立在保护知识产权的基础上。

Linus Torvalds, inventor of the Linux open source operating system, was for a time the bête noire of business. He was described in 2001 as “cancer” by Microsoft’s then chief Steve Ballmer. But a recent survey found some 78 per cent of companies who had responded ran at least part of their business on open source software. Even Satya Nadella, Microsoft’s new chief, has said he “loves Linux” and is moving part of the company’s Azure platform to run on the system. There is a sense of karma about this but 15 years can be a long time to wait for acceptance.

开源操作系统Linux的发明人林纳斯•托瓦兹(Linus Torvalds)一度被商界视为“眼中钉”。2001年他曾被时任微软(Microsoft)首席执行官史蒂夫•鲍尔默(Steve Ballmer)称为“癌症”。然而，最近一次调查表明，回应调查的企业中，大约78%在开源软件上运营至少一部分业务。就连微软新任首席执行官萨蒂亚•纳德拉(Satya Nadella)也表示“喜爱Linux”，正在将微软Azure平台的一部分迁移到Linux系统上运行。这种峰回路转有点宿命感，不过15年等来的接受，时间上可能长了一点。

It is not just Linux that is worthy of redemption. Today Cal Leeming is many things: a businessman, a film-maker, a devoted father and a charity volunteer. A loaded word like “hacker” risks obscuring these other facets. It is no wonder he doesn’t use it.

值得救赎的不仅仅是Linux。今天，凯尔•利明身兼多重身份：商人、电影制片人、全心投入的父亲以及慈善事业的志愿者。而类似“黑客”这样含义丰富的词汇可能掩盖上述其他方面的身份。难怪他不使用这个称号。