In the world of hacking there is good and evil, much like in any other world I suppose. However, like in the Transformers movies, there are two divided teams that clearly play on opposite sides of the fence. A black hat hacker, as you know, is someone who uses his or her “powers” for evil doings. On the other hand there is a type of computer genius that uses his or her powers to do good in this world: the white hat hacker.
Hackers come in literally all shapes and sizes. One may be
sitting next to you right now, with you being oblivious to the whole thing.
We all have heard of some of the most infamous black hat
hackers; they have brought down companies, governments, and caused disruption
to many lives around the world. In this article we turn the spotlight away from
those looking to cause harm and focus on those individuals whose efforts are
for bringing good to the world with their skills.
Steve Wozniak
The “other Steve” at Apple Computers started his life off as
a hacker, believe it or not. To begin with, he wasn’t so much a white hat
hacker. He built a small machine that was placed between the wall and the phone
jack, which would allow for long distance calls to be made with no charge to
the caller. Steve later went on to use his digital expertise to build the
empire know as Apple Computers.
The creator of both the Mac I and Mac II computers, “Woz”
left the company and sold off most of his stock in 1987. At the time he claimed
that the company had “been
going in the wrong direction for the last five years” and wanted to cut all
ties with the company outside of an annual stipend worth an estimated $120,000;
equaling roughly the amount of money that Apple made off of the iPhone 6 in the
first half-second on the day of release.
The Mac I and Mac II changed the world of computing without
a doubt. Woz took what used to be a huge machine and turned it into something
small, attractive, and reasonably priced. He opened the door to the computing
world we know today.
Tim Berners-Lee
Have you heard of this crazy thing called the “World Wide Web”?
Chances are that you probably have: it has been sweeping the nation and changed
the landscape of our world drastically over the last 20 plus years. Berners-Lee
created the World Wide
Web, not to be confused with the Internet that Al Gore created in the
1980’s. Berners-Lee put together a proposal in 1989 for a business management
system that would connect offices around the world via Hypertext Transfer
Protocol (HTTP). Later in that same year he built the internet connection and
changed the world for ever.
Like Copernicus,
Berners-Lee took the idea of the workforce revolving around one computer, and
adapted it to the workforce revolving around one server. This server would hold
the data and provide access needs to many people around the world. At the time,
I am sure the World Wide Web was looked at as a utility item for the work that
needed to be completed. As a white hat hacker, Berners-Lee builta World Wide
Web that is now a multifaceted Swiss Army Knife medium that can bring endless
amounts of knowledge, joy, and entertainment to anyone with a connection.
History
If there were no Internet or iPhones, the world would look
100% different. Guaranteed. The landscape of the world in the past 20 years has
completely changed. I can remember growing up when computers were some crazy
expensive thing that only Yuppies would own. Now, you can mosey on down to
Wal-Mart and pick one up for under $200. Heck, my smartphone can do more things
than my ’96 Packard Bell computer ever could.
It is amazing to think that we are living in a time that is
literally revolutionary. When the children that are being born today are in
school they will not only learn of Copernicus, Einstein, and Edison; but
Wozniak and Berners-Lee too as pioneers of the world. Hackers are the digital
historians of the age, crafting the future with one line of code at a
time.
It is both breathtaking and bizarre to think that we are
living in a renaissance of sorts.
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