The word “hack” traces its origins to the MIT Tech Model Railroad Club in 1955, and quickly migrated to the nascent field of computers. Originally it described a way of problem solving, implying cleverness or innovation or resourcefulness, without any criminal or even adversarial qualities. But by the 1980s, “hacking” most often described breaking computer security systems. It wasn’t just getting a computer to do something new, it was forcing it to do something it wasn’t supposed to do.
