One sign that 2017 was a rough year, as if we needed any more, was the emergence of "hacking" as a mainstream concern. Formerly a kind of black magic practiced by nerds (and occasionally by Angelina Jolie), hacking is now better understood as a result of human error—on the part of the user, the creator of what got hacked, or both. In 2017 we refined our understanding of hacking in this original, narrower sense but we also expanded its definition well beyond that. It’s no longer just computers that get hacked, but elections, institutions, societies, and, well, our brains. This broader usage of hacking describes a nefarious external interference in a process that normally works in a certain predictable and logical way, and in this usage, you might notice a problem: We can’t unambiguously say how institutions and cultures and brains are supposed to work, at least not like we can about software, so maybe hacking isn’t the perfect word (on the other hand, software influences all of these more than ever, so they’re also more susceptible to literal hacking, if only indirectly).
#41: Hacked Like a House
#41: Hacked Like a House
#41: Hacked Like a House
One sign that 2017 was a rough year, as if we needed any more, was the emergence of "hacking" as a mainstream concern. Formerly a kind of black magic practiced by nerds (and occasionally by Angelina Jolie), hacking is now better understood as a result of human error—on the part of the user, the creator of what got hacked, or both. In 2017 we refined our understanding of hacking in this original, narrower sense but we also expanded its definition well beyond that. It’s no longer just computers that get hacked, but elections, institutions, societies, and, well, our brains. This broader usage of hacking describes a nefarious external interference in a process that normally works in a certain predictable and logical way, and in this usage, you might notice a problem: We can’t unambiguously say how institutions and cultures and brains are supposed to work, at least not like we can about software, so maybe hacking isn’t the perfect word (on the other hand, software influences all of these more than ever, so they’re also more susceptible to literal hacking, if only indirectly).