[dang]

The creative and transgressive meanings of the word "hacker" have been around about equally long and both go back to the MIT milieu. Its first appearance in print referred to breaking into phone networks. (Sorry I don't have links handy but this has been discussed many times on HN.) So it's not true that the word started out good and was corrupted by misunderstanding... but I bet that claim is also about as old as both usages!

Agreed about pointlessness in any case.

[walshemj]

I thought that the MIT Model railroad club usage was well before phone phreaks and blue boxing - not sure when STD dialing came in in the states

[dang]

This is what I was thinking of:

http://duartes.org/gustavo/blog/post/first-recorded-usage-of...

https://web.archive.org/web/20060715031620/http://listserv.l...