Sociology Research - Hacking subculture - Essay Example

In order to clarify the issue about hackers, it is but necessary to trace the history of these group.. Hackers are members of a sub-culture from the group of Information Technology professionals. According to the website Cyber punk project, Hackers are technical people like programmers and designers who “enjoy exploring details of programmable systems and an expert at a particular program, sometimes going to the length of being obsessive about programming” ( Cyber punk Project ). Thus, hackers are highly- skilled people who have their own culture, considerably a group with their own language and rituals.

Hackers have different motives which can often lead them to committing malicious acts. In a study made by Taylor among young hackers, he identified some reasons behind hacking : feelings of addiction, urge of curiosity, boredom with educational system, enjoyment of feeling of power ,peer recognition, and political acts ( Jordan and Taylor 46) In 1994, Levy categorized the hackers into generations, the first of which are computer aficionados in the 50’s and 60’s mostly from MIT. The second generation are the ones who popularized computing through the development of PCs, and the third generation are responsible for the advent of computer games ( Taylor 15 ).

Nowadays, hackers are considered belonging in the fourth generation (Taylor 17). Unfortunately, the fourth generation hackers have been perceived also as crackers. Crackers are hackers who commit cyber crime by maliciously spreading virus or illegally accessing other people’s PC or system. Nevertheless, there is a group of hackers known as “white hackers “ who can be considered as a pure form of hacker. According to an article in the website koiskea, their ( white hackers ) main goal is to “help improve computer systems and technologies “(koiskea.net ). Ross also argued that ethical hacking done by these white hackers provide a lot of benefits such as