DrOdd@cup.portal.com (02/02/88)
The following is a piece I wrote for "W.O.R.M." a rival Cyberpunk newsletter
(rival to Cyberpunk International's "The Screamsheet") published by Sir
Francis Drake. Make of it what you will. Just don't tell me about it. This
stuff is Copyright 1987 Katra Services and may be used as you like as long as
you don't charge for it.
Cyberhacker!
(commentary-on-a-stick)
by Dr. Odd
OK. The 64 Mbps question before us is this: Cyberpunk and the Hacker
Ethic, is there a connection, or what?
Now, according to your relative cranial bandwith you may think to
yourself "The philosophical implications of this are staggering!" or
"Haven't I got something better to do then read this tripe? After all,
there are zits to pop and Twinkies to ingest". Well, since the answer
is obvious (and by definition left as an exercise to the student), we
shall plow bravely on into the glory of journalistic oblivion.
The obvious starting point is to define what a Hacker is. Personally I
tend to favor the old fashioned definition, which effectively names
a Hacker as that individual who Fiddles With The System. Further
regressively (and anal retentively) defining our terms we can state
that "The System" means the hard or soft aspects of technology (e.g.
machines and the code that runs them), "Fiddles" means obsessively
fondles, tweaks, and manipulates, "With" means the opposite of
"Without", and, of course, "The" is one of those Zen concepts fully
understood only by California Yuppies who attend those Human
Potential seminars where everybody hugs a lot and no one is allowed
to go to the bathroom. Wiggly, ain't it?
Now, I would be remiss in giving you your money's worth for this
article if I did not note that in recent years the definition of a
Hacker has evolved somewhat, mainly due to the mutating effects of
cosmic rays on the minds of modern journalists. Our esteemed
press, in it's never ending search for the pithy headline, has created
the image of a pimply faced youth breaking into the secret Pentagon
nuclear code files with an Apple II and his mom's credit card.
Behold, The Modern Media Hacker! Hacking has become synonymous
with breaking into computer systems and trampling over the
metaphorical daisies of the file system. The spate of FBI raids on
teen wireheads addicted to stroaking their software and the rash of
media inspired laws against breaking the System fence (so quickly
embraced by the righteously telegenic politicians) contributed to
this catchy label image. We, of course, know that there is more to
this then that. Or the other. Zig it?
Having pedantically defined what a Hacker is (Isn't it nice to be
classified boys? To be filed into the correct receptacle? Inserted
into the appropriate sort slot? Collated into the right sequence?
Gives you this deeply penetrating feeling deep in the retrospatial
domain...) it is time to move on to the profoundly high brow concept
of The Hacker Ethic. Now, some people question the very existence
of any sort of ethical code as practiced by the Hacker community at
large. Those people, the product of an excess of liberal arts
education and lacking in the harsh experience of a null pointer at
three in the morning, have the amusing notion that ethics has much
to do with the high moral ground occupied by the corpses of Greek
philosophers. As it happens they are wrong. (You saw that coming,
didn't you?.)
Ethics refers to the standards of professional and moral conduct.
The definition says nothing about the type of morality which is
involved nor about the social standing of the profession. Thus we are
perfectly free to make up our own definition of The Hacker Ethic, a
common practice among scholars and informally known as
"bullshitting for tenure". Once we do that we can go on to compare
and contrast it with Cyberpunk values and really grab your flagging
interest.
So let's classify the elements of The Hacker Ethic, hitting the
obvious high points, which most people (and I use the term loosely)
in the field would agree on:
* Throbbing creative urges directed at Breaking The System
* A deeply ethereal respect for authority
* Supernaturally intense technical curiosity
* Pathological persistence
* Not Getting Caught (Always a worthy goal in itself)
* A genetic predisposition for getting into things
(I suspect that this last bullet has a lot to do with the fact that the
stupefying majority of Hackers are male, but don't tell Share Hite I
said so. Ah, yes! Psychology in a well designed, sanitary, disposable
pocket. It's all in the marketing.)
So how the hell does all this relate to Cyberpunk? Do you care? Well
read on and find out? Dr. Odd has not problem telling you what you
think.
I would argue that Cyberpunk has it's roots firmly embedded in the
flesh of the Hacker zombies. Basically, Cyberpunk is evolved
directly out of bits and pieces of cultural DNA, with the Hacker
ethic a major chain of molecules tossed into a blender, along with
essence of Madison Avenue, Wall street, Pop art, Punk/New Wave
music, High Tech, and low life. Set it on purree, pour it out, throw it
at the wall, and Viola! You have Cyberpunk oozing down your psyche.
Nice image, what?
Remember, the Hacker techie underculture gave us that ultimately
Cyberpunk appliance, the personal computer. That underculture, that
cauldron of late nights, stale Twinkies, cold pizza and assembly
language on a home made board was the genesis of the personal
computer. Oh sure, the mass production which brought it up, that
was payed for by the big corporations, in particular Apple for the
home market and IBM for the business market. But still, the
proto-Cyberpunx started it all with the kits and the first primitive
software. Some of them even become the big corporations (Egad!
Jobs & Woz as Cyberpunx? Casting from hell...).
The point of this abbreviated history-on-a-spoon lesson is that I'm
desperately hunting for that elusive connection which would justify
the time I invested in this article. Well, not really. There *is* a
connection, and in noting that Cyberpunk at least in part evolved
from the Hacker experience of the 70's we should note that
Cyberpunk must incorporate some elements of that elusive Hacker
Ethic.
Think about it for a second (millions of cycles, plenty of time). It's
all in the name. Cyber the technology, Punk the rebellion. Cyberpunk
is about street smart technology applied to creative, self enriching
(literally) rebellion. Life on The Edge socially and tech. Now, the
ultimate modern Hacker wet dream is to crack a banking system
with their suped up PC and hijack megabytes of $. Beat The System
by Fiddling With it. Technology in the service of ego gratification,
power flowing from the keyboard. What could be more Cyberpunk?
Then there is that wonderful attitude towards authority. Cyberpunk
is more then anything else about decentralization. The central
mainframe with it's implication of central control is totally
anathema. It's all distributed processing plugged directly into your
own fingertips. You have all that power under your own control and
are not subject to the dictates of the totalitarian, all controlling
Operating System. Ultimately it's all aimed at controlling your own
outlets of creativity, at getting away with your own eccentricity
(the civilized word for buck naked weirdness).
Now consider the Hacker Ethic. Authority? HAH! It's all about
breaking the rules, isn't it? Authority is the thing to beat. It's the
thing to test your technical creativity against and win. Rebellion at
the end of the electric outlet. You don't hack in the modern media
sense just because it feels so good when you stop. Oh no. You do it
because it is to some extent elitist. You are part of the club. You
know the jargon. You have the right access codes. Ultimately, it's a
way of proving that you are better then The Authority which
designed the hack-proof system. And Not Getting Caught. By getting
in you become the authority. Yeah I know, it's all because you hate
your father and want to sleep with your mother. Dr. Odd should be
charging by the hour in LA-LA land (CA). But think about it. It's
plausible. It reads well. You're still awake...
Now think about the old fashioned way, where hacking means staring
glossy eyed at your CRT for 24 hours straight, fixing and
recompiling, fixing and recompiling, fixing and recompiling, ad
nauseum. It's that fascinating addiction to make that silly machine
do your bidding, make it do backflips (the proper relationship of
software to the user) in the most baroque of domains. You sleep
with it, you eat with it, and the first thing you think of when you
wake up is that next line of code. Those of you who have been there
know what I mean. Heroin has nothing on serious hacking. It's a
mental drug. There's your persistence. There is that deep need to
know what the manuals don't specify.
Now read some Cyberpunk novels. How is that almost mystical
interface with the computer different from the melding you
experience when you hack on your latest software baby? You live it
and you breathe it. If you could you would meld your mind to it.
Cyberpunk to the N-th degree. The wireheads in the novels get lost
in the system by becoming addicted to it. It's that vast bit diddling
potential, it's that sweet variety of interfaces, the exhilerating
*speed*. They know the systems on an almost supernatural level,
they are artists on the machines, using them as delicately as Da
Vinci ever wielded his brush on those misty backgrounds.
Cyberpunk and the Hacker Ethic. Is there a connection, or what?
Well, or what. There is a connection. Don't doubt it. The proof? The
final undeniable piece of clincher? Most of you who read this hack in
the old and new sense. You phreak. You phrack. You eat pizza. And
fess up, you've tried Twinkies. And here you are. Reading a Cyberpunk
rag. You're the connection bright boys and girls! Children of the
techno generation. Feral kids on bright metal streets spitting on the
polished walls. Johnny would be proud.
There it is. Earth shattering, ain't it? Hits you just about there,
between the frontal lobe and the pubic region. Feels kind of good,
doesn't it? Let's do it again sometime. You pay.
(Dr. Odd is the founder and, on a good day, overseer of Cyberpunk
International, an ill defined organization designed to spread the
Cyberpunk virus. During his trips into Deep Reality he designs
mainframes in, (where else?) Silicon Valley.)TRADER@cup.portal.com (02/03/88)
Notes from the underground -
Dr Odd had some interesting comments - to which I add the following:
Programming is a high-level power trip. You are a god! You have the power
of creation... When I write programs, those are my children. Except, unlike
children created from your spare genetic material, they do whatever you told
them to do. You can't blame the schools, society, or too much sugar in the
diet if they run amok - only their creator was responsible for their character
flaws. Besides, since bitheads are socially unacceptable, we have a hard
enough time convincing a pleasure partner to get sticky with us, let alone
being a parent of our offspring.
Mr. Slippery
TRADER@cup.portal.com
TRADER%cup.portal.com@sun.com
ln63wgq@sdcc13.ucsd.EDU (Keith Messer) (02/04/88)
Hey, Sir Francis Drake is still around? I spoke to him indirectly in Massachusetts when there was a scene there. Are any of the other old guys still about? Any of you out there, get in touch with me personally (619 455-1581) or, if you want to live dangerously, leave me netmail. Also read Sci.crypt. One of the things I posted there was minorly incorrect, but there are good things in the wind. I'd be more specific but for fear of Ron King's ghost... ghosts in the network--sound familiar? By the way, do any of you know about finite fields? I'd ask on one of the math sections, but this is pretty application-specific. Keith Messer ln63wgq@sdcc13.ucsd.edu
dnelson@ddsw1.UUCP (Douglas Nelson) (02/07/88)
Yes, Sir Francis Drake is definately still around... A little difficult to find, but can usually respond in about a day or so layover... :-) Also, somenone earlier posted some interesting scanner frequencies, which made me go out and get my old Radio Shack scanner out of the closet... does anyone have any more interesting frequencies? Is anyone familiar with Shortwave radio enough to know where WRNO worldwide can be found? How about the national time channels or whatever... you know, the 'At the tone, 12 hours, 13 minutes, standard universal time...." Boy, what a tangent... ------------------ Douglas Nelson dnelson@ddsw1.UUCP ------------------
david@daisy.UUCP (David Schachter) (02/09/88)
WWV (Fort Collins, Colorado) and WWVH (Kauai, Hawaii) broadcast on 2.5, 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz. These frequencies are also used by other time stations around the world. At times, a Japanese time station can be heard in the San Francisco Bay area, instead of the U.S. stations. Other frequencies are also used, by non-U.S. stations. For more information on WWV and WWVH, contact the National Bureau of Standards. -- David Schachter (And yes, my wristwatch is set exactly.)
robert_mike_gutierrez@cup.portal.com (02/09/88)
dnelson@ddsw1.UUCP writes: >Also, somenone earlier posted some interesting scanner frequencies, which >made me go out and get my old Radio Shack scanner out of the closet... does >anyone have any more interesting frequencies? > >Is anyone familiar with Shortwave radio enough to know where WRNO worldwide >can be found? How about the national time channels or whatever... you know, >the 'At the tone, 12 hours, 13 minutes, standard universal time...." What scanner freq's do you want???? I assume that you need them for the San Francisco Bay area??? I can give you plenty of those, including some of the more interesting & sensitive freq's that my be interesting to listen to..... Also, the "time clock" you speak of is the Nat'l Breau of Standards station "WWV", which is on 5, 10, 15 & 20 mhz on a shortwave dial, but you need a shortwave rec'vr by all means. Write me directly if you need the freq's.. Robert Mike Gutierrez <r-michael@cup.portal.com>