The New Hackers Dictionary | Page 8

text). Even words ending in phonetic /k/ alone are sometimes treated
this way; e.g., `soxen' for a bunch of socks. Other funny plurals are
`frobbotzim' for the plural of `frobbozz' (see [104]frobnitz) and
`Unices' and `Twenices' (rather than `Unixes' and `Twenexes'; see
[105]Unix, [106]TWENEX in main text). But note that `Twenexen'
was never used, and `Unixen' was not sighted in the wild until the year
2000, thirty years after it might logically have come into use; it has
been suggested that this is because `-ix' and `-ex' are Latin singular
endings that attract a Latinate plural. Finally, it has been suggested to
general approval that the plural of `mongoose' ought to be `polygoose'.

The pattern here, as with other hackish grammatical quirks, is
generalization of an inflectional rule that in English is either an import
or a fossil (such as the Hebrew plural ending `-im', or the Anglo-Saxon
plural suffix `-en') to cases where it isn't normally considered to apply.
This is not `poor grammar', as hackers are generally quite well aware of
what they are doing when they distort the language. It is grammatical
creativity, a form of playfulness. It is done not to impress but to amuse,
and never at the expense of clarity.
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Spoken inarticulations
Words such as `mumble', `sigh', and `groan' are spoken in places where
their referent might more naturally be used. It has been suggested that
this usage derives from the impossibility of representing such noises on
a comm link or in electronic mail, MUDs, and IRC channels
(interestingly, the same sorts of constructions have been showing up
with increasing frequency in comic strips). Another expression
sometimes heard is "Complain!", meaning "I have a complaint!"
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Node:Anthropomorphization, Next:[110]Comparatives,
Previous:[111]Spoken Inarticulations, Up:[112]Jargon Construction
Anthropomorphization
Semantically, one rich source of jargon constructions is the hackish
tendency to anthropomorphize hardware and software. English purists
and academic computer scientists frequently look down on others for
anthropomorphizing hardware and software, considering this sort of
behavior to be characteristic of naive misunderstanding. But most
hackers anthropomorphize freely, frequently describing program

behavior in terms of wants and desires.
Thus it is common to hear hardware or software talked about as though
it has homunculi talking to each other inside it, with intentions and
desires. Thus, one hears "The protocol handler got confused", or that
programs "are trying" to do things, or one may say of a routine that "its
goal in life is to X". One even hears explanations like "... and its poor
little brain couldn't understand X, and it died." Sometimes modelling
things this way actually seems to make them easier to understand,
perhaps because it's instinctively natural to think of anything with a
really complex behavioral repertoire as `like a person' rather than `like
a thing'.
At first glance, to anyone who understands how these programs
actually work, this seems like an absurdity. As hackers are among the
people who know best how these phenomena work, it seems odd that
they would use language that seemds to ascribe conciousness to them.
The mind-set behind this tendency thus demands examination.
The key to understanding this kind of usage is that it isn't done in a
naive way; hackers don't personalize their stuff in the sense of feeling
empathy with it, nor do they mystically believe that the things they
work on every day are `alive'. To the contrary: hackers who
anthropomorphize are expressing not a vitalistic view of program
behavior but a mechanistic view of human behavior.
Almost all hackers subscribe to the mechanistic, materialistic ontology
of science (this is in practice true even of most of the minority with
contrary religious theories). In this view, people are biological
machines - consciousness is an interesting and valuable
epiphenomenon, but mind is implemented in machinery which is not
fundamentally different in information-processing capacity from
computers.
Hackers tend to take this a step further and argue that the difference
between a substrate of CHON atoms and water and a substrate of
silicon and metal is a relatively unimportant one; what matters, what
makes a thing `alive', is information and richness of pattern. This is

animism from the flip side; it implies that humans and computers and
dolphins and rocks are all machines exhibiting a continuum of modes
of `consciousness' according to their information-processing capacity.
Because hackers accept a that a human machine can have intentions, it
is therefore easy for them to ascribe consciousness and intention to
complex patterned systems such as computers. If consciousness is
mechanical, it is neither more or less absurd to say that "The program
wants to go into an infinite loop" than it is to say that "I want to go eat
some chocolate" - and even defensible to say that "The stone, once
dropped, wants to move towards the center of