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Hacker Culture
Let me first recapitulate two brief preludes that figure prominently in Hacker Culture:
- Around 1970 John Draper discovered that a freebie whistle included with Captain Crunch cereal sounded a tone that allowed him, as a literal whistle-blower, to take control of the phone line. Sounding the frequency of 2600 Hz, the high-pitched toy quickly sprouted a cottage industry of small electronic devices called "blue boxes" (first built by Draper) that emitted the commanding tune. Shortly thereafter, in 1971, Steven Jobs and Steven Wozniak built hordes of the boxes and sold them to students in the Berkeley dorms. Jobs and Wozniak would go on to build and found Apple computers by employing the same principle: take existing knowledge and turn it to profit by, eventually, making appropriation proprietary. (Slashdot readers are no doubt familiar with the fact that Mac OS X is not much more than an "aqualicious" -- and expensive -- wrap of FreeBSD.)
- The first personal computer was arguably the Altair. It came as a raw DIY kit that required soldering for assembly and programming to make it work. An early success in coding came in the form of Altair BASIC, a programming language adopted from mainframe systems by Paul Allen and Bill Gates. Unlike other hobbyists who shared their exploits freely, Allen and Gates decided to charge for their adaptation, but were quickly thwarted in their race to the goldmine by the sharing of software at computer clubs, an action that prompted Gates to call fellow developers thieves. For these hobbyists, the notion that programs could be secret and had to be purchased violated the tradition of programming as an ongoing collaboration. The births of our two major personal computing platforms, Mac and PC, consequently both stem from significant changes in the relations between openness and secrecy, sharing and ownership.
In Hacker Culture, Douglas Thomas provides a rewarding account of what preceded and followed these developments, charting the evolution of cracking and hacking from early yet seasoned programmers, generally found at Ivy League departments or under ARPA jurisdiction, to the demonized teenage villains of the 1990s. Although the term "hacking" has become somewhat of an umbrella misnomer to cover diverse behaviors bridging half a century, Thomas does it remarkable justice through, as he puts it, "an effort to understand hacking as an activity that is conditioned as much by its history as by the technology that it engages." To this end, he seeks to engage the role of hacking from an expansive and useful perspective, covering the hacker relationship to technology and society, representation of the hacker through both mainstream media and outlets such as TAP, Phrack and 2600, as well as the juridical construction of the criminalized hacker, which is basically a fancy term for Kafkaesque travesties of justice (the cases of Kevin Mitnick and Chris Lamprecht are analyzed in depth).
Hacker Culture is thankfully not a stylized look at subculture, as an embryonic cult aspiring to become marketable culture, but rather a much broader view of the increasingly computerized networks that comprise society. It is an intelligent exploration beyond the package-design boxes of software, covering our documents, and the product-design casings of computers, housing our institutions. Seen from, or via, an autonomous, skilled perspective on the command line, Hacker Culture provides an indispensable insight into a history of computing that it has become increasingly important to understand for computer users of all levels and abilities. As such, it is perhaps best suited, and intended, for those who do not frequent sites like this, but even pundits with Slashdot bookmarked since it was listed in the root will presumably enjoy the thoughtful analysis Thomas brings to the subject.
A lingering criticism, not exactly directed at the book, is that this publication truly marks the entry of the "hacker" into the realm of academia, where this figure will be dissected ad nauseam along with other minority reports concerned with the so-called radical fringes. Earlier blockbusters on the hacker topic, like Steven Levy's eponymous Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution from 1994, had a certain "sensationalist" appeal that, akin to William Gibson's Neuromancer, drew more of their leitmotifs from classic frontier westerns than cultural criticism. Instead of reading about jacking in and cracking from these primal sources, we got a ton of obligatory theory that read between the lines and reported on the findings at twice the length. Thomas, although he writes both eloquently and lucidly in an entertaining style, is fundamentally connecting the dots of theoretical writing as a second-generation commentator, frequently quoting Levy, for example, and at times the discussion embarks on rather redundant pontifications as a result. (Recall how you can guess the subject of most connect-the-dots outlines, while it usually takes a child careful tracing to number 147 or so before a shriek of joy recognizes the rabbit.) Such misgivings, which are essentially more inspired by the predictable rhetorical mode of academia than this book, are however relatively minor compared to the welcome prospects of actually having some core ideas about free information and open-source computing distributed to a wider audience.
A question remains about what will happen to the figure of the hacker now that we have had, and discussed, both Matthew Broderick, in Hollywood's War Games, and Kevin Mitnick, in jail. In Hacker Culture, both lay claim to capture and coach the collective imagination with regards to what informed autonomy means and the paybacks it receives. Perhaps the future, following Hacker Culture, will prepare a better balance between revered stardom, obscene bankrolls, criminal records and lone isolation cells?
Reviewer Are Flagan has trouble remembering his own passwords. You can purchase Hacker Culture from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Or just read Hackers , which is original and best account of the Hacker culture. All others are just imitations.
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I was introduced to computers from the hacker culture presented in the (mediocre) film hackers when I was in early teens. People grouch quite a lot about the portrayal of hackers in modern culture (speckled 'evil' nerd - 2600 letters often have stories of people who enjoy hacking and informing administrators of vulnerabilities getting suspended, and associated with people like the trenchcoat mafia), but I found the film really interesting - the characters seemed like normal people for a change (not segrated because of seclusiveness or 'black clothes', but because they were just smarter).
"You know you don't act like a scientist, you're more like a game show host." Dana Barret
Most of the time the reviewer is talking about "intruder" types, like Kevin Mitnick, Phrack and 2600, but then periodically jumps over to Steven Levy and the Altair, using a much more Jargon File-ish use of "hacker".
I don't care particularly which word is used but came away from the review without a clear idea of what the book is about.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
Another decent read, in my view was Takedown - the story of notorious "cracker" Kevin Mitnick. Although the author, Tsutomu Shimomura takes all the credit for doing aboslutely everything, and portrays his team and associates as bumbling idiots, the story about Kevin's life and habits is quite interesting.
;-)
Another pretty good story was "The Watchman" which was about Kevin Poulson, the famous Ma Bell phone switch hacker. This guy was a real freak! The ultimate geek, at one stage he had a stolen phone switch taking up most of his living room in his appartment, along with stolen unix terminals etc. He was the guy who kept winning phone competitions by controlling the phone equipment, and sending goths along to pick up the prizes!
Code, Hardware, stuff like that.
Living in a small town and being able to work command lines has people in total fear of me. People assume that because I can really use a computer I'm some sort of nefarious hacker just waiting for the chance to steal all their financial info.
When are non-geek types going to realize that being a serious computer user, system admin or even a programmer doesn't mean you're ALSO a hacker? When will they start taking a bit of responsibility for securing their systems? Most hackers I've met here are script kiddies who couldn't hack a wet paper bag if the people in the area bothered installing security patches...
In her book on the origins of the broadcasting industy (Inventing American Broadcasting), the historian Susan Douglas provides an excellent chapter on the amateur radio operators of the early decades of the 20th century. These were young men who begged, borrowed and stole to construct cool but essentially useless technologies (sound familiar?), used them to show off to their friends, chat idly, and piss off authorities at Marconi Wireless and the US Navy. If you were to replace the word amateur radio operator with the word hacker it would read like a chapter from Steve Levy - except that Douglas provides a more critical (in the good way) of this phenomenon. She argues that is reflect shifts in the job market (an increase in white-collar, technologically oriented occupations), changing notions of masculinity (based on mastery of technology rather than physical prowess), etc.
An excellent read, and it provides a much-needed historical context for understanding hackers. A useful counter to the usual sensational literature (hacker as genius, hacker as criminal, hacker as arrested adolescent, hacker as cowboy), etc.
My main problem with this book is that although the subject matter is fascinating, the actual writing is tedious, and follows an extremely dry academic style. I felt like I was reading a graduate-level sociology dissertation. Ho, hum. Material this interesting deserves a much better treatment.
Jeez, getting through the introduction was a chore. I was reminded of the Bataan Death March. The introduction was the worst. It was like an endless academic spiel, just going on, and on, and on, and on (but you get the idea). BREVITY IS THE SOUL OF WIT, MAN! Sigh...
Still...
He means well. And, for an academic audience, the book might be helpful in that it might frame hackers in a more positive, more accurate light.
But, Jesus, does he ramble. I think a much better-written book on hackers is "Hackers" by Steven Levy, which follows the original MIT hackers, and traces up through the microcomputer companies and game developers that came later. I'd like to see Mr. Levy do a followup, taking us from the early nineties to the present. He's a much more animated, interesting writer (no disrespect to the academic style of "hacker culture", it's just a little dry).
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
...most hackers have traditionally been found in, on, or near large, well-computerized research universities.
In fact, that person sitting next to you in class could be a hacker! Your prof could be a hacker! Your friendly school janitor could be a hacker!
(Are you now, or have you ever been a hacker?)
Heh...
Academicians have been talking about hackers for a long time. (I seem to recall writing a paper on the subject for a grad school class, and doing some reading up for it, anyway.) Maybe people just didn't notice until now.
I'm not a geek, I'm just a clever script.
by Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon
Very interesting book about the origin of computers that could talk to each other. Highly recomended.
...I can't believe people still think Captain Crunch (John Draper) discovered that the whistles inside Captain Crunch Cereal were able to emit roughly 2600hz tones. It was actually a group of blind phone phreaks who Draper hung with. This is known, has been known a long time, and even Draper has admitted as such in a number of interviews (after he's gotten older, after his supply of young hackers has essentially been assured based on his "reputation").
Please, don't perpetuate a falsehood. And no, you really don't want any "stretching exercises".
This reads like a transcript for that TLC program about hackers:
Hackers: Computer Outlaws