introduction.tex

This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of
computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and
flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language
hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical
debate.

The `hacker culture' is actually a loosely networked collection of subcultures
that is nevertheless conscious of some important shared experiences, shared
roots, and shared values. It has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics,
in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. Because hackers as a group are particularly
creative people who define themselves partly by rejection of `normal' values
and working habits, it has unusually rich and conscious traditions for an
intentional culture less than 60 years old.

As usual with slang, the special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their culture
together -- it helps hackers recognize each other's places in the community and
expresses shared values and experiences. Also as usual, \textit{not} knowing the
slang (or using it inappropriately) defines one as an outsider, a mundane, or
(worst of all in hackish vocabulary) possibly even a \citeentry{suit}. All human
cultures use slang in this threefold way -- as a tool of communication, and of
inclusion, and of exclusion.

Among hackers, though, slang has a subtler aspect, paralleled perhaps in the
slang of jazz musicians and some kinds of fine artists but hard to detect in
most technical or scientific cultures; parts of it are code for shared states of
\textit{consciousness}. There is a whole range of altered states and
problem-solving mental stances basic to high-level hacking which don't fit into
conventional linguistic reality any better than a Coltrane solo or one of
Maurits Escher's `trompe l'oeil' compositions (Escher is a favorite of hackers),
and hacker slang encodes these subtleties in many unobvious ways. As a simple
example, take the distinction between a \citeentry{kludge} and an
\citeentry{elegant} solution, and the differing connotations attached to each.
The distinction is not only of engineering significance; it reaches right back
into the nature of the generative process in program design and asserts
something important about two different kinds of relationship between the hacker
and the hack. Hacker slang is unusually rich in implications of this kind, of
overtones and undertones that illuminate the hackish psyche.

But there is more. Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and
inventive in their use of language. These traits seem to be common in young
children, but the conformity-enforcing machine we are pleased to call an
educational system bludgeons them out of most of us before adolescence. Thus,
linguistic invention in most subcultures of the modern West is a halting and
largely unconscious process. Hackers, by contrast, regard slang formation and
use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display
an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with
the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Further, the
electronic media which knit them together are fluid, `hot' connections, well
adapted to both the dissemination of new slang and the ruthless culling of weak
and superannuated specimens. The results of this process give us perhaps a
uniquely intense and accelerated view of linguistic evolution in action.

Hacker slang also challenges some common linguistic and anthropological
assumptions. For example, it has recently become fashionable to speak of
`low-context' versus `high-context' communication, and to classify cultures by
the preferred context level of their languages and art forms. It is usually
claimed that low-context communication (characterized by precision, clarity, and
completeness of self-contained utterances) is typical in cultures which value
logic, objectivity, individualism, and competition; by contrast, high-context
communication (elliptical, emotive, nuance-filled, multi-modal, heavily coded)
is associated with cultures which value subjectivity, consensus, cooperation,
and tradition. What then are we to make of hackerdom, which is themed around
extremely low-context interaction with computers and exhibits primarily
``low-context'' values, but cultivates an almost absurdly high-context slang
style?

The intensity and consciousness of hackish invention make a compilation of
hacker slang a particularly effective window into the surrounding culture --
and, in fact, this one is the latest version of an evolving compilation called
the `Jargon File', maintained by hackers themselves for over 36 years. This one
(like its ancestors) is primarily a lexicon, but also includes topic entries
which collect background or sidelight information on hacker culture that would
be awkward to try to subsume under individual slang definitions.

Though the format is that of a reference volume, it is intended that the
material be enjoyable to browse. Even a complete outsider should find at least a
chuckle on nearly every page, and much that is amusingly though-provoking. But
it is also true that hackers use humorous wordplay to make strong, sometimes
combative statements about what they feel. Some of these entries reflect the
views of opposing sides in disputes that have been genuinely passionate; this is
deliberate. We have not tried to moderate or pretty up these disputes; rather we
have attempted to ensure that \textit{everyone's} sacred cows get gored,
impartially. Compromise is not particularly a hackish virtue, but the honest
presentation of divergent viewpoints is.

The reader with minimal computer background who finds some references
incomprehensibly technical can safely ignore them. We have not felt it either
necessary or desirable to eliminate all such; they, too, contribute flavor, and
one of this document's major intended audiences -- fledgling hackers already
partway inside the culture -- will benefit from them.

A selection of longer items of hacker folklore and humor is included in
\citeappendix{Appendix A}. The `outside' reader's attention is particularly
directed to the Portrait of J. Random Hacker in \citeappendix{Appendix B}.
Appendix C, the \citeappendix{Bibliography}, lists some non-technical works
which have either influenced or described the hacker culture.

Because hackerdom is an intentional culture (one each individual must chose by
action to join), one should not be surprised that the line between description
and influence can become more than a little blurred. Earlier versions of the
Jargon File have played a central role in spreading hacker language and the
culture that goes with it to successively larger populations, and we hope and
expect that this one will do likewise.