There's been some great talk lately about hacking in the humanities at THATCamps Prime (aka, CHNM) and Victoria. At CHNM, I proposed two directions for humanists talking about code. One direction was to get coders and hackers and humanists together to see what we could learn about how we read and understand code. The other was a hands-on 'lets start learning how to hack' session.
"Any medium powerful enough to extend man's reach is powerful enough to topple his world. To get the medium's magic to work for one's aims rather than against them is to attain literacy." -- Alan Kay, "Computer Software", Scientific American, September 1984