McKenzie Wark (2001), 'Hacker Manifesto 2.0', http://www.feelergauge.net/projects/hackermanifesto/version_2.0/


There is a general ambiguity around the term hacking but a general definition sounds positive in describing: 'any process of knowledge where data can be gathered, where information can be extracted from it, and where in that information new possibilities for the world produced, there are hackers hacking the new out of the old.' (Wark, 2001)
 
In the hacker manifesto, there is a suitably optimistic, if not utopian, tone in the production of new concepts and perceptions 'hacked out of raw data'. The term 'hacking' has its origins in electrical engineering and computing. The reach and contemporary relevance of these activities makes hacking an appropriate metaphor for creative production in general. 

In this general sense, hacking can produce new understandings from existing materials and in various forms such as programming language, poetic language, or in other creative output. McKenzie Wark sees the hacker as a new class with a political agenda over property (alluding to the communist manifesto in this respect). He explains: 
'And yet while we create these new worlds, we do not possess them. That which we create is mortgaged to others, and to the interests of others, to states and corporations who control the means for making worlds we alone discover. We do not own what we produce -- it owns us.' (2001) 
The manifesto calls for hackers to take control of this situation and seek autonomy over what they produce, to identify their interests as a class in order to serve society as a whole, and strike alliances with other workers who do not own the means of production. Hackers require a political agenda in other words. 

Property rights have been extended from land to capital to information. The hacker is involved in immaterial labour associated with the material production of information. Reflecting his other essay that stresses the material and immaterial nature of labour in this new economy, Wark claims:
'Information is no less real than physical matter, and is dependent on it for its existence. Since information cannot exist in a pure, immaterial form, neither can the hacker class. Of necessity it must deal with a ruling class that owns the means of extracting or distributing information, or with a producing class that extracts and distributes. The class interest of hackers lies in freeing information from its material constraints.' (2001) 
According to his logic, information like other goods is owned and controlled by class interests, and the hacker is in a position like the proletariat to overturn these relations. Whole parts of this manifesto are paraphrased from the communist manifesto to effect, for instance: 'Class conflict becomes more fragmented, but creeps into any and every relation that becomes a relation of property.' (2001)

This hacker class, according to Pit Schulz, can be seen in the tradition of Gramsci's 'organic intellectual', although he sees the concept of immaterial
labour as more fruitful, as it includes the user of systems (2002b). The core of the argument for Wark lies in the transformation of information into property and hence takes the form of patents, trademarks, copyright and the moral right of authors. The hacker is able to disrupt the resultant class relations in this respect. Wark explains: 
'When the hack is recognised in an abstraction of property rights, then information as property creates the hacker class as class. This intellectual property is a distinctive kind of property, in that only a new creation may lay claim to it. New property is created only in its qualitative difference.' (2001)
 
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Cornelia Sollfrank (2001) 'Hacking the Art Operating System', interviewed by Florian Cramer, Chaos Computer Club, Berlin; also version published in 2002-3, in Simon Yuill and Kerstin Mey, eds., Communication, Interface, Locality, Manchester University Press in association with Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art and Design.


In 'Hacking the art operating system' (2001), Cornelia Sollfrank draws together the principles of hacker culture and arts practice, and many of the preconceptions of both fields (her interest is in women hackers in particular). The interview reveals the historical separation of applied art or craft and pure art or aesthetics. Sollfrank's ironic claim that 'a smart artist makes the machine do the work' has relevance here too as a clarification of 'hacking the art operating system' (2001). If hacking is seen in this light, it appears to undermine the distinction and the preferred image of the geeky male hacker. Concerned with these gendered views and her own disappointment at the lack of female presence in the scene, Sollfrank began to invent female hackers and to make documentaries to alter preconceptions (note: she is also a key member of the cyberfeminist group 'old boys network'). She describes this strategy as switching 'from the journalist-research modus to the artistic-modus' and in terms of pedagogy or what Florian Cramer calls 'social hacking' (2001). In this way, Sollfrank's practice of fabrication can be seen as hacking the 'art operating system' by analogy (employing Thomas Wulffen's phrase). This interference with art's program, system and interface is most explicit in her project 'female generator' of 1997 in which multiple female media artist submissions were fabricated for the 'extension' net art competition by the Hamburger Kunsthalle. 'Female Extension' consisted of several hundred art websites under different female artist names generated by a computer program, making a feminist hack of a net art competition. 

Hacking is also Pit Schultz's description of Alex McLean's winning entry to the transmediale 2.0 festival that in itself would somewhat valourise hacking (2002). Schulz claims that: 
'Hacking is more than a metaphor [...]. The strongest tools of the web at the moment, p2p filesharing networks are built on the principle of open system architectures with minimal access restrictions. Insecurity in terms of openness is a basic feature of the net. Maybe one has to embrace it to get hacked and celebrate? How detached does the "media culture" discourse have to get from the phenomena of everyday digital life to finally become a full part of the reactionary logic which it seems to try to critique?' (2002) There is a further danger here too identified by Cramer and Sollfrank as the possibility of the programmer or hacker not simply as independent spirits but as a return to the myth of the 'autonomous artist coined in the 18th century, the freelance genius' (2001). This is not the case either with the free software movement that is thoroughly stitched into the corporate field of software development. Pit Schultz quotes Richard Stallmann's ironic 'free software song' to emphasise the potential evangelism around the fuigure of the hacker:
'When we have enough free software; At our call, hackers, at our call; We'll throw out those dirty licenses; Ever more, hackers, ever more.
Join us now and share the software; You'll be free, hackers, you'll be free.' (2002b)
 
Certainly there is no guarantee of ideological position. Amy Alexander makes a similar point in stressing the ambiguity of the term and the apolitical motivation of much activity in this area. Although hacking generally describes an activity like crudely hacking a piece of wood with an axe, the application to computing is rather more subtle but still a general procedure of taking something apart - in this case code. Alexander explains the confusion partly as the mixing of 'hacking' and 'cracking' that suggests the breach of security: 'some hackers crack, many hackers believe in exploratory cracking but not destructive cracking' (2001). A hacker is thus someone with proficiency and practical understanding of the structure and operations of computer networks and systems. Those with more malign intentions are sometimes known as crackers (aka terrorists).  

 
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It is worth pointing out that open source is not a security issue, as has been argued by Microsoft et al who withhold operating system specifics on this basis. An operating system like Linux is therefore no less secure than Windows. On the contrary, the open source transparent model might encourage the fast identification and patching of potential security flaws. Microsoft's 'closed source' model is open to abuse not least because of its objectional politics. This logic is exemplified by the issue of 'intellectual property' in which the intellectual claims 'property rights' demonstrates restricted intellect (restricted to the capitalisation of its in- and outcomes, according to Thorsten Schilling, 2000).

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