The word "hacker" has been around for centuries and has had various though related meanings. But in the spirit of keeping my explainers short, I'm sticking only to the recent and relevant etymology.

Today, in most uses, a hacker is generally considered a kind of computer or cyber criminal. That's unfortunate. It was never that way before.

By the mid 20th century, the word "hacking" came to mean to work on, create, or to fix/repair something in an improvised or clever way. It wasn't derogatory at all. It was a compliment more than anything else, a praise to someone who figured out a novel way to do something, often against some odds.

Remember MacGyver? That's a hacker.

That meaning stayed true during the early days of telephony and then computer culture (late 1950s-1970s). A hacker was someone curious about how technology worked and was eager to learn all the ins and outs even if that meant some innocuous poking and prodding, but never meant for material gain or vandalism. It was learning something for its own sake, for the delight that came with discovery.

But by the 1980s, when computers were taking wider hold in society and began to be used as a tool to facilitate non-technical things, criminal elements started entering the fray. They used the same techniques as the earlier hackers but for ill-gotten personal or material gain.

Hacker movies like War Games brought public attention to the idea of hacking but in a negative context. There was also a scene in Ferris Bueller's Day Off where Ferris uses his computer and modem at home to access his high school's computer system to reduce the number of recorded absences. Pretty innocent all-in-all, but still it was unauthorized access.

Those examples, along with burgeoning news reports of "cyber crime", the word hacking and hacker become synonymous with criminal activity.

Today, the word has a dual meaning: Inside legitimate hobbyist communities, hacking is still considered a positive trait and skill. But in the wider public sphere, being called a hacker doesn't carry the same positive connotations.

I consider myself a hacker of sorts, but it's not something I discuss outside of my nerdy circle. There's just too much undeserved and inaccurate negative baggage associated with the word.

And that is a shame. It's a great word.