A Brief History of Hacks

A Brief History of Hacks I was out meeting a friend and some of her friends that I didnt previously know last night, and the topic of school came up. (SIDE NOTE: that was the most difficult and awkward sentence Ive typed in a long time. I think the problem stems from not having a good word for friend of a friend. In the interest of furthering the human language, I propose we adopt exponential notation to denote level of friendship. I.e. A friend, or root-level friend is one that you personally know and like. A friend^2 would be a friend of a friend, a friend^3 would be a friend of a friend^2, etc. That would make things so much easier, for example: I was going to go to that convention with my friend, but a lot of friend^2s and friend^3s were there, so I felt like I wouldnt fit in. Plus I dont have a pair of cat ears to wear. See? Isnt that so much easier? Not to mention your most special friend, or friend^0 is the one. But I digress.) Anyway, were talking about school and I mention that I go to MIT and one of the girls asks: Do you participate in the annual prank? Relative frequency and vocabulary aside, I was a bit impressed that this girl knew about our hacks, because she was in an entirely different social sphere than MIT. The rest of the girls were a bit confused, so I explained to them what hacks were and began sharing a few of my favorite hacks throughout history, incuding the (in)famous police car on the dome, and the Caltech Cannon. Then this morning, I saw this slideshow of some of the more well-known hacks and figured itd be worth sharing: http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/gallery/100308_mit_hacks/ (SIDE NOTE: If youre a web developer, please please please, dont make slideshows where you have to click to load the next page for a single image. Every time you do, Richard Stallman thinks about doing away with the GPL. Use a gallery.) Some of my personal favorites that Ive seen are the music notes on the dome, the solar-powered T car (STILL more reliable than the red-line, even though for the first day it was broken) and of course, the upside-down-lounge. I cant wait to see what the hackers will come up with this year!