This page won’t teach you how to hack, so if you were here for that sorry but you’ll just end up wasting your time.

Hacking is often portrayed to be many things it is not. Thanks to the media’s portrayal of hackers as immoral computer experts who are associated with all sorts of illegal computer activities, we find that hackers are portrayed as cyber outlaws out to steal your passwords or break into your bank account to steal your money.

Today this flawed portrayal couldn’t be farther from the truth, but this is not how hacking actually started. I can’t tell you the entire story here and won’t give you the gist of it because I don’t think history should be summed up. If you really are interested in knowing about some of the greatest minds in computer history, I’d suggest reading Steven Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. I’ve read some parts of it (still working through it) but what I’ve read so far is brilliant.

Generally speaking - hacking has more to do with mindset than with computers. It applies to the whole wide world around you. You could hack your cupboard to make more room for your stuff, hack your body to fight jet lag, reset your bio clock or alter your sleep cycles. The list is endless and thankfully there happens to be a pretty awesome website dedicated to life hacking - Lifehacker.

Hacking, I believe, is a way of thinking. It’s about being curious, asking loads of questions and not being afraid of experimenting with things. Hackers are motivated by a desire to understand - how things work, why they work and what would happen if you’d change something.

So if hackers are just random curious guys wanting to know stuff, who are all those people doing computer shit in the movies? Well, most of them are just criminals with keyboards. Though I’ll admit it’s a bit more nuanced than that - there are shades of grey (white hats, black hats, and everything in between.) But the ones Hollywood loves to show you breaking into banks? Yeah, those are just thieves who happen to use code instead of crowbars.