Last updated on April 6, 2011
The Vatican has decided to rehabilitate hackers.
Yes, that Vatican:
“[A]n authoritative Vatican publication appears to rehabilitate them and traces parallels between hacker philosophy and the teachings of Christianity.
The surprisingly charitable view of hackers was expressed by the Jesuit priest Father Antonio Spadaro in an article for the fortnightly magazine Civilta Cattolica, the text of which is vetted by the Vatican Secretariat of State prior to publication.
Hackers should not be confused with crackers, Spadaro wrote, citing a definition penned by technology writer Eric S. Raymond: ‘Hackers build things, crackers break them.'”
I’m not even sure William Gibson, the man who coined the term “cyberspace,” and one of the founding fathers of the cyberpunk movement, could have foreseen that one day the Vatican would turn its attention to hackers and crackers.
(HT: Katherine Maher.)