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Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Residents of MIT's Simmons Hall collaborated to make a smiley face on the building's facade, December 8, 2002.

Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness, and/or to commemorate popular culture and historical topics.[1][2][3][4][5][6] The pranks are anonymously installed at night by hackers, usually, but not exclusively, undergraduate students. The hackers' actions are governed by an informal yet extensive body of precedent, tradition and ethics.[7][8] Hacks can occur anywhere across campus, and occasionally off campus; many make use of the iconic Great Dome,[9][10] Little Dome,[11] Green Building tower,[12][13] or other prominent architectural features[14] of the MIT campus. Well-known hacker alumni include Nobel Laureates Richard P. Feynman[15] and George F. Smoot.[16] In October 2009, US President Barack Obama made a reference to the MIT hacking tradition during an on-campus speech about clean energy.[17]

Although the practice is unsanctioned by the university, and students have sometimes been arraigned on trespassing charges for hacking,[18][19][20] hacks have substantial significance to MIT's history and student culture. Student bloggers working for the MIT Admissions Office have often written about MIT hacks, including those occurring during Campus Preview Weekend (CPW), an event welcoming admitted prospective freshman students.[21] Alumni bloggers on the MIT Alumni Association website also report and document some of the more memorable hacks.[22] Since the mid-1970s, the student-written guide How To Get Around MIT (HowToGAMIT) has included a chapter on hacking, and discusses history, hacker groups, ethics, safety tips, and risks of the activity.[23]

For a decade, the MIT Museum included a "Hall of Hacks" featuring famous MIT hacks, but the section was closed in 2001,[24] temporarily returning for a 2003 exhibition.[25] In 2011, the display space was reallocated to the MIT 150 exhibition, a year-long show commemorating MIT's 150th anniversary.[26] Although hacks were not featured in the exhibit, certain student activities such as the Annual Baker House Piano Drop were featured in the exhibition.[27] The Museum's extensive collection of hacker artifacts and documentation continues to be preserved and expanded, with a selection of larger relics from past hacks plus explanatory panels and plaques semi-permanently displayed inside the Stata Center. This mini-exhibit on hacks is located on the ground floor of the Stata Center, near the cafeteria at the southeastern end of the complex, and may be viewed by visitors during normal office hours.[28]

Famous hacks include a weather balloon labeled "MIT" appearing at the 50-yard line at the Harvard/Yale football game in 1982, the placing of a campus police cruiser on the roof of the Great Dome,[29] converting the Great Dome into R2-D2 or a large yellow ring to acknowledge the release of Star Wars Episode I and Lord of the Rings respectively,[30] or placing full-sized replicas of the Wright Flyer and a fire truck to acknowledge the anniversaries of first powered controlled flight and the September 11 attacks respectively.[31]

  1. ^ "These Are Not Your Ordinary College Pranks". C. Boston Globe. April 1, 2003.
  2. ^ "Elaborate Practice Jokes Make the Grade at MIT". 4E Living. The Miami Herald. April 10, 2002.
  3. ^ "Scholarly MIT celebrates its crazier side". Dallas Morning News. April 29, 1991.
  4. ^ Gaine, Judith (April 1, 1991). "Of Hacks and Smoot: MIT Students Have Engineered Campus Pranks since 1876". Boston Globe.
  5. ^ Abell, John (May 16, 1991). "MIT students exhibit ingenuity, humor". C. Chicago Tribune.
  6. ^ Sreenivasan, Sreenath (April 1, 1999). "Fun for Pranksters". The New York Times.
  7. ^ Peterson, Institute Historian T. F. (2011). "Hack, hacker, hacking; Hacking ethics". Nightwork: a history of hacks and pranks at MIT (updated ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 6. ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9.
  8. ^ "The "Hacker Ethic" [concise version]". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 26, 2011.
  9. ^ "Hacks on the Great Dome (Bldg. 10)". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  10. ^ Peterson, Institute Historian T. F. (2011). "Domework: hacking the domes". Nightwork: a history of hacks and pranks at MIT (updated ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 50–73. ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9.
  11. ^ "Hacks on the Small Dome (Bldg. 7)". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  12. ^ "Hacks on The Green Building (54)". MIT IHTFP Hack Gallery. Retrieved May 2, 2011.
  13. ^ Peterson, Institute Historian T. F. (2011). "Greener pastures: the Green Building hacks". Nightwork : a history of hacks and pranks at MIT (updated ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 76–83. ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9.
  14. ^ Peterson, Institute Historian T. F. (2011). "Form + Function = Hack: the architectural hacks". Nightwork : a history of hacks and pranks at MIT (updated ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. pp. 112–119. ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9.
  15. ^ Peterson, Institute Historian T. F. (2011). Nightwork : a history of hacks and pranks at MIT (updated ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 41. ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9. A Nobel-winning physicist, Feynman was equally famous for his practical jokes
  16. ^ Gil, Gideon (October 4, 2006). "At MIT, future Nobelist not above a prank or two". Boston Globe.
  17. ^ Peterson, Institute Historian T. F. (2011). "Hacking into the new millennium". Nightwork : a history of hacks and pranks at MIT (updated ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-262-51584-9. I'll probably be here for awhile; I understand a bunch of engineering students put my motorcade on top of Building 10
  18. ^ Peter, Tom (October 31, 2007). "Campus pranks now come with permission slips". Christian Science Monitor.
  19. ^ Ellement, John (February 28, 2007). "Prosecutors drop charges again 3 MIT students in prank case". Boston Globe.
  20. ^ Abel, David (March 30, 2000). "Hackers skirt security in late-night MIT treks". Boston Globe.
  21. ^ "CPW 2008: The Hack Edition". Explore & discover MIT: Blogs. MIT Admissions Office. Archived from the original on March 18, 2011. Retrieved May 1, 2011.
  22. ^ "Entries tagged with "hacks"". Slice of MIT: News & Views for the Alumni Community. MIT Alumni Association. Archived from the original on November 7, 2011. Retrieved May 1, 2011.
  23. ^ "Hacking". How To Get Around MIT (HowToGAMIT) (39th ed.). Cambridge, Massachusetts. 2010–2011. pp. 150–156. ISBN 978-0-9760779-6-1.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
  24. ^ Arnaout, Rima. "Museum's Hall of Hacks Concludes Ten-Year Run". The Tech. Archived from the original on May 16, 2011. Retrieved May 1, 2011.
  25. ^ Hurley, Mary (August 24, 2003). "At MIT, how the hack they did it". Boston Globe.
  26. ^ "MIT 150: 150 ideas, inventions, and innovators that helped shape our world". boston.com. The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 7, 2012.
  27. ^ "Hackers' delight -- A history of MIT pranks". boston.com. The Boston Globe. Retrieved April 7, 2012.
  28. ^ "Stata Look and Feel « Slice of MIT by the Alumni Association". Alum.mit.edu. March 25, 2009. Archived from the original on December 12, 2012. Retrieved May 7, 2011.
  29. ^ "MIT answers the siren call of a good joke". Chicago Tribune. May 10, 1994.
  30. ^ Abel, David (May 23, 2001). "Weight of finals explains MIT prank: 'Hack' on dome gets high grade". Boston Globe.
  31. ^ "MIT 'hacks' mark Sept. 11 with a fake fire truck". Boston Globe. September 11, 2006.
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