Dr. Dobb's Journal March 2000
About a year ago, literary agent, author, and intellectual provocateur John Brockman invited some heavy thinkers -- Marvin Minsky, Richard Dawkins, Danny Hillis, Freeman Dyson, and John McCarthy, to name a few -- to ponder the question, "What is the most important invention in the past 2000 years?"
Last year, CmdrTaco prodded the self-described nerds who loiter about the Slashdot site ("News for Nerds. Stuff that matters.") to consider the question, "What is the greatest hack of all time?" Each challenge produced a voluminous list of nominees, with justifications for the choices that ranged from profundity to absurdity. Of making lists there is no end, especially at the end of a decade/century/millennium, and although we may have fumbled the ball when we announced on our January cover that the end had arrived, surely we are now safely in the end zone. You can accumulate a lot of stuff in a thousand years, and a millennium ought to get a few months to vacate the premises. The end is wending its way usward; if not yet here, then near. But I digress.
It seemed to me that it might be instructive to compare the two lists. So I did.
The two lists didn't have as many items in common as I expected. You can compare the lists yourself; the respective URLs are: http://www.edge.org/documents/Invention.html and http://slashdot.org/features/99/12/13/0943241.shtml. But I thought that you might like to try a little test; a quiz, if you will. Whether this quiz tests your grasp of the difference between the concepts of "hack" and "invention" or your understanding of the differences, if any, in the thought processes of Famous Thinkers and Self-Described Nerds, I have not a clue. The rules are simple enough, though: For each item below, decide if it is, according to the people who responded to the two challenges, an invention (it appeared on Brockman's list), a hack (it appeared on the Slashdot list), both (it appeared on both lists), or neither (I just threw it in to trip you up). Answers, with some of which you will probably disagree, appear at the end of the column.
Invention, hack, both, or neither?
1. The computer
2. The Internet
3. The Internet Worm
4. Duct tape
5. The great pyramids of Egypt
6. The contraceptive pill
7. The airplane
8. The SR-71 Blackbird
9. The AK-47
10. The Gatling gun
11. The atomic bomb
12. The city
13. SimCity
14. The light bulb
15. Aspirin
16. Democracy
17. Human consciousness
18. Life
19. Distilled spirits
20. The eraser
Answers (don't peek): 1: both; 2: invention; 3: hack; 4: hack (I disagree with this one myself); 5: hack; 6: invention; 7: invention; 8: hack; 9: hack; 10: invention; 11: both; 12: invention; 13: neither; 14: hack (!); 15: invention; 16: invention; 17: both; 18: hack; 19: invention; 20: invention.
Michael Swaine
editor-at-large
mswaine@swaine.com