Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

annual event, turned out to be the kickoff for a spirited and public debate,continued to this day, about the future of hacking and the Hacker Ethic as definedin this book.The term "hacker" has always been bedeviled by discussion. When I was writingthis book, the term was still fairly obscure. In fact, some months beforepublication, my editor told me that people in Double-day's sales force requested atitle change "Who knows what a hacker is?" they asked. Fortunately, we stuck withthe original, and by the mid-eighties the term had become rooted in the vernacular.Unfortunately for many true hackers, however, the popularization of the term was adisaster. Why? The word hacker had acquired a specific and negative connotation.The trouble began with some well-publicized arrests of teenagers whoelectronically ventured into forbidden digital grounds, like government computersystems. It was understandable that the journalists covering these stories wouldrefer to the young perps as hackers after all, that's what the kids called themselves.But the word quickly became synonymous with "digital trespasser."In the pages of national magazines, in television dramas and movies, in novels bothpulp and prestige, a stereotype emerged: the hacker, an antisocial geek whoseidentifying attribute is the ability to sit in front of a keyboard and conjure up acriminal kind of magic. In these depictions, anything connected to a machine ofany sort, from a nuclear missile to a garage door, is easily controlled by thehacker's bony fingers, tapping away on the keyboard of a cheap PC or aworkstation. According to this definition a hacker is at best benign, an innocentwho doesn't realize his tme powers. At worst, he is a terrorist. In the past fewyears, with the emergence of computer viruses, the hacker has been literallytransformed into a virulent force.True, some of the most righteous hackers in history have been known to sneer atdetails such as property rights or the legal code in order to pursue the Hands-OnImperative. And pranks have always been part of hacking. But the inference thatsuch high jinks were the essence of hacking was not just wrong, it was offensive totrue hackers, whose work had changed the world, and whose methods couldchange the way one viewed the world. To read of talentless junior high schoolstudents logging on to computer bulletin boards, downloading system passwords orcredit bureau codes, and using them to promote digital mayhem and have themedia call them hackers... well, it was just too much for people who consideredthemselves the real thing. They went apoplectic. The hacker community stillseethes at the public burning it received in 1988 at Hacker Conference 5.0, when areporting crew from CBS News showed up ostensibly to do a story on the glory ofcanonical hackers but instead ran a piece loaded with security specialists warningof the Hacker Menace. To this day, I think that Dan Rather would be well advised