The Hacker Manifesto

Submitted by Kai on Thu, 2009-03-26 20:46.

Does this bring back memories, or what? I still remember my first PC, the modem, my parents sleeping, me watching the 4000 color screen showing facinating information...I found the text here.

The Hacker Manifesto

by
+++The Mentor+++
Written 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 willing 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 loss of a paragraph

Submitted by Margaret (not verified) on Fri, 2009-03-27 00:35.
The loss of a paragraph function changes the organizational demands of the format.

Singularity

Submitted by anonymousm (not verified) on Fri, 2009-03-27 00:31.
It is possible for a whole election to be swung, IMO, by people taking a similar attitude, particularly if subject to strong direction, in real time, not on the ether. I'm thinking of quiet activists dumping ballots during elections. Likewise, interference could be people of all ages hacking because of personal beliefs.

Espionage

Submitted by Margaret (not verified) on Fri, 2009-03-27 00:24.
Kai - Date? It's fairly new, I know, because I was here several days ago. Only skimmed the post, as yet, because IMO: hacking may be espionage, perhaps occurring more often than anything else. Problems I encounter in attempting to accessing information have become a major concern for me. Because of the recurrence, I have begun to wonder how people would create obstructions to information posted on line. Sites spin grey, no access but no explanation either. .Pdf documents stop during loading, and cannot be accessed from any of a variety of links, while documents on other sites can be downloaded without difficulty. The comment function on blogs is greyed out; although AV seems to have caught up with that problem recently. Positing, for discussion, that this could be the result of purposeful action by an agent of a government (or party) not wishing the public to have access to documentation considered against that state's (or proprietary) interests, how would it be done? I've noticed before that access to negative reports on pharmaceuticals was controlled by requirements that a fee be paid. That made me cranky, and is similarly censorship, intentional or not, but it is obvious and thus one has a way to combat it, meanwhile paying the fee and getting on with one's work if an issue is important enough. If intentional, the creation of barriers to Internet information is a denial of one's right to free speech as well as of rights to representation. If nothing else, the idea forms a foundation for plotting fiction. Other elements of the same are wide-spread loss of computers by many because of the bugs; I lost my hard drive. So did thousands of others, which obscures any possible relation of cause to consequence. The most significant factor supporting purposeful behavior is recurrence of loss regarding specific topics. If purposeful, it indicates a dependence on both ignorance and sovereignty, and should be exposed.

Recent comments