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.