Released in 1995, the movie “Hackers” (wikipedia / imdb) was an interesting interpretation of hackers of that period, and while it had many inaccuracies in it, they were actually so inaccurate that to members of the hacker/cracker, phreak and warez scenes that i knew at the time they were quite funny and the movie ended up having a cult following with the group.

Hackers trailer from YouTube

It was originally published in the ezine Phrack (wikiepedia entry).

==Phrack Inc.==
Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3 of 10

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The following was written shortly after my arrest…

\/\ The Conscience of a Hacker /\/
by
+++The Mentor+++

Written on January 8, 1986
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Another one got caught today, it’s all over the papers. “Teenager
Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal”, “Hacker Arrested after Bank Tampering”…

Damn kids. They’re all alike.

But did you, in your three-piece psychology and 1950’s technobrain,
ever take a look behind the eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what
made him tick, what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

I am a hacker, enter my world…
Mine is a world that begins with school… I’m smarter than most of
the other kids, this crap they teach us bores me…

Damn underachiever. They’re all alike.

I’m in junior high or high school. I’ve listened to teachers explain
for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. “No, Ms.
Smith, I didn’t show my work. I did it in my head…”

Damn kid. Probably copied it. They’re all alike.

I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it’s because I
screwed it up.
Not because it doesn’t like me…
Or feels threatened by me…
Or thinks I’m a smart ass…
Or doesn’t like teaching and shouldn’t be here…

Damn kid. All he does is play games. They’re all alike.

And then it happened… a door opened to a world… rushing through
the phone line like heroin through an addict’s veins, an electronic pulse is
sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought… a board is
found.

“This is it… this is where I belong…”
I know everyone here… even if I’ve never met them, never talked to
them, may never hear from them again… I know you all…

Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They’re all alike…

You bet your ass we’re all alike… we’ve been spoon-fed baby food at
school when we hungered for steak… the bits of meat that you did let slip
through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We’ve been dominated by sadists, or
ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found us will-
ing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the desert.

This is our world now… the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without paying
for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn’t run by profiteering gluttons, and
you call us criminals. We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek
after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin color,
without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals.
You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us
and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.

Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is
that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for.

I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this individual,
but you can’t stop us all… after all, we’re all alike.

+++The Mentor+++
_______________________________________________________________________________

From the Wikipedia Cyberpunk page:

Cyberpunk is a science fiction genre noted for its focus on “high tech and low life”. It features advanced science, such as information technology and cybernetics, coupled with a degree of breakdown or radical change in the social order.

Classic cyberpunk characters were marginalized, alienated loners who lived on the edge of society in generally dystopic futures where daily life was impacted by rapid technological change, an ubiquitous datasphere of computerized information, and invasive modification of the human body.

Cyberpunk plots often center on a conflict among hackers, artificial intelligences, and megacorporations. They tend to be set in a near-future Earth, rather than the far-future settings or galactic vistas found in novels such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation or Frank Herbert’s Dune. The settings are usually post-industrial dystopias but tend to be marked by extraordinary cultural ferment and the use of technology in ways never anticipated by its creators (“the street finds its own uses for things”). Much of the genre’s atmosphere echoes film noir, and written works in the genre often use techniques from detective fiction.

Bladerunner clip from YouTube

I’ve listed some of my favourite Cyberpunk related sites below:

The Cyberpunk Project

William Gibson aleph

Mirrorshades

The official Cyberpunk homepage

The Gentleman Loser

Cyberpunk Review

The Resource Center for Cyberculture Studies

Wikipedia sites:

“Neuromancer” by William Gibson (official Gibson site)

“Snow Crash” by Neal Stephenson

Bladerunner

Johnny Mnemonic film

I’ll finish up with two quotes from the brilliant William Gibson cyberpunk novel, “Neuromancer”.

“The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead channel.”

“The matrix has its roots in primitive arcade games. … Cyberspace. A consensual hallucination experienced daily by billions of legitimate operators, in every nation, by children being taught mathematical concepts. … A graphic representation of data abstracted from banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding…”

Johnny Mnemonic trailer from YouTube

I’m really curious to discover its year of manufacture, buti imagine it would be from some time around the late 1960’s.

In celebrating their 15th year, they ran an interesting article which is a letter from Wired’s Founding Editor, Louis Rossetto, to his two kids in which he Recalls the Dawn of the Digital Revolution.

You can access previous editions of Wired magazine articles via the cover browser page.

Talking about the Wired magazine covers…most people that i know who read the magazine would agree that they have always been well designed and add to the magazine itself.

I hope you are still around in another 15 years Wired :)

And the interesting bit…“The film is currently targeted for a Summer 2008 (US) worldwide release. Halo will be shot in Wellington, New Zealand, and will make use of the full range of executive producer Peter Jackson’s state-of-the-art production and post-production facilities there, including Weta, Stone Street Studios, and Park Road Post.”

One of his earlier books (and the first one of his that i read), Microserfs, (read the original Wired short story from Jan 1994) is one of my favourite books of all time and JPod is up there with it in my rankings so i highly recommend that you go out and buy both of them if you don’t already have them.

The website they have put together for JPod is pretty cool as well…very true to the book ;)

Oh yeah…heres a small excerpt from the book and its also worth checking out both the written and the audio interviews with him as well.

“Top 10 things likely to be overheard from a Klingon Programmer”

10. Specifications are for the weak and timid!
9. You question the worthiness of my code? I should kill you where you stand!
8. Indentation?! – I will show you how to indent when I indent your skull!
7. What is this talk of ‘release’? Klingons do not make software ‘releases’. Our software ‘escapes’ leaving a bloody trail of designers and quality assurance people in its wake.
6. Klingon function calls do not have ‘parameters’ – they have ‘arguments’ – and they ALWAYS WIN THEM.
5. Debugging? Klingons do not debug. Our software does not coddle the weak.
4. A TRUE Klingon Warrior does not comment on his code!
3. Klingon software does NOT have BUGS. It has FEATURES, and those features are too sophisticated for a Romulan pig like you to understand.
2. You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert unless you’ve read it in the original Klingon.
1. Our users will know fear and cower before our software! Ship it! Ship it and let them flee like the dogs they are!

I tried to find it on the web, with not much luck until the other day…It looks like Hans Bjordahl (the comic’s creator) has released it for all to enjoy with a new strip being released every Monday. Nice…