Here's my attempt to define hacker from a talk/preso I gave a couple months ago to an artist crowd:
"Currently, "hacker" is used in two main ways, one pejorative and one complimentary. The pejorative, main-stream definition can be summed up as: a computer criminal. The complimentary definition is harder to define, but something like this: basically, a hacker is a curious person that repurposes stuff, often in a playful or clever or creative way; stretching some-thing’s capabilities in a new direction it wasn’t designed for."<p>video:
<a href="http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/11/11/simon-dorfmans-pecha-kucha-presentation-about-gumbo-labs-video/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/11/11/simon-dorfmans-pecha-kuc...</a><p>slides:
<a href="http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/10/30/slides-from-my-gumbo-labs-presentation-at-pecha-kucha-last-night/" rel="nofollow">http://www.gumbolabs.org/2009/10/30/slides-from-my-gumbo-lab...</a>