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From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan 7 17:35:59 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-47
HACKERS 4.0
#47 in the second online CAA series
by
Steven K. Roberts, HtN (WORDY)
Palo Alto, CA
November 3, 1988
copyright 1988, Steven K. Roberts
>From Saratoga:
I have to stop now, ignoring the jazz improv in the next room the food,
the naked poolsplashes of frolicking loonies, the whirling articulate sounds of
synthesizers, the interactive video, the party. Yes, I'm closing my senses to
the play of my peers, goddamn it, for tomorrow comes the shock. I actually
FEAR it: I fear returning to the real world the way a wilderness trekker fears
the City.
I am now at the post-party of the Hackers Conference (Hackers 4.1?), and
we're all fresh from a mad, delicious microworld of brilliance that throbbed
for three days in the Santa Cruz Mountains. It was a time of galvanizing
contact between brains at play... a time of self-definition, software magic,
video, human connections, and -- most dramatically -- a rare liberation from
the need to translate.
It was also a time of outrage. CBS News sent a crew in on Friday, the
first day of the event, promising not to get in the way if we would only,
please oh please, let them get a scoop for the national news before our
exploits hit the wires on press day. Fred Peabody and John Blackstone showed
up with a camera team, and for about six hours they followed us around, miked
random conversations, interviewed some of the more colorful hackers, and taped
the spirited opening session.
On Saturday night, between graphics demonstrations, a hush fell over the
crowd as the CBS Evening News tape was loaded into the projection video system.
Under a picture of a chip, the anchorman read, "An unusual conference is under
way near San Francisco. The people attending it are experts on a technology
that intimidates most of us, but has changed the way we live. John Blackstone
reports..."
And then there we were -- the bike, the woods, the "sleepaway camp," the
crowd of mingling intellects. An ominous voice-over intoned: "A small
revolutionary army is meeting in the hills above California's Silicon Valley
this weekend, plotting their next attacks on the valley below, the heart of the
nation's computer industry. They call themselves computer hackers."
So far, well, not too bad -- assuming the viewers were intelligent enough
to recognize a metaphorical slant. But the term "revolutionary army" implied
some kind of cohesion, and there was a grumble from the crowd. The camera
closed in on Jonathan Post, from Rockwell. He spoke forcefully: "The people
who are gathered here changed the world once; if we can agree on where to go
next, we're gonna change it again." This fellow isn't known for sober views,
but again, his meaning was essentially correct IF you consider both source and
context.
Then the CBS slant became excruciatingly obvious: "What hackers have
learned to do with computers HAS changed the world, for both good and bad.
They're the people who dreamed of and built the personal computer industry."
(Right about here appeared a close-up of me with the Winnebiko.) "But the same
kind of talent is creating never-before dreamed-of crime. Because for a
computer, the only differenece between a hundred and a million is a few zeros."
Donn Parker of SRI International (speaking from his office, not the
conference) was next: "And so, in fact, criminals today I think have a new
problem to deal with, and that is how much should I take. They can take any
amount they want." A chorus of boos rose from the audience. What was this
story about? Certainly not US!
The narrator went on. "Telephone companies are the most victimized
because those who break into phone company computers can link up for FREE to
computers around the world."
To this, Richard Fitzmaurice of Pacific Bell added a stab from his office:
"You'll hear the term computer hacker, computer cracker; we call them computer
CRIMINALS." A loud roar of outrage filled the auditorium.
The piece went on, detailing intrusion into military and research
computers, then offered a tight shot of Parker saying, "A hacker today is an
extremely potentially dangerous person. He can do almost anything he wants to
in your computer." By this point the room was a seething mass of slandered
professionals, and order was lost.
What happened here was a sobering, frightening look at what's become of
our news media. Maggie and I are used to teevee inaccuracies, but it's never
been a real problem -- it's hard to grossly distort a generally upbeat story of
strange people on bizarre bikes (and the publicity helps sell books). But here
we saw what happens when the news organization has a preconceived sensational
story and finds a convenient timing hook: CBS commited a smoothly edited crime
against the truth, using selected snippets of video to create a bestselling
image of evil geniuses gathered in a dark conspiracy against the world's
computers. The reality was different: this crowd of CEO's, authors, software
designers, visionaries, and eccentric intellectuals was committed to the future
of human information management -- how we will deal with masses of text,
communications, graphics, interactive media, games, education, and so on. It
was also a crowd dedicated to circumventing limitations, conjuring magic from
computers, and making the kinds of conceptual leaps known as invention.
After the Canonized Bullshit (CBS), we found ourselves in a curious state.
Some angrily advocated a libel suit, others plotted smear campaigns or more
subtle attacks. Some proposed that we find another name for ourselves besides
the oft-poisoned term "hackers," while many promised to write letters to CBS
and Peabody's new employer, ABC 20/20. And a good number just grew more
cynical, discounting the truth of everything else on the news (it does make ya
wonder about election coverage and other matters of national interest, doesn't
it?). In an ad hoc gathering, those of us who happened to be journalists
stayed up until three, drafting a press release and formulating the hackers'
"official" response. In short, we ALL learned something.
* * *
Despite the intrusion of ignorance, however, Hackers 4.0 was a profoundly
energizing event. Held at Camp Swig in the hills above Saratoga and catered
with something approaching inspiration, it was a chance for people who spend
most of their time in intellectual loneliness to pig out on wide-bandwidth
communication. It was a look at the Xanadu project, which purports to create a
repository of human knowledge, infinitely interlinked and cross-referenced. It
offered glimpses of nanotechnology, a future industry that could blur the
distinction between man and machine. It was a chance to see three competing
unreleased products in the interactive video field, presented in succession by
their designers. It was an orgy of computer graphic play, where Leo Schwab's
engaging tale of intellectual property disputes with Pixar was illustrated by a
unicycle juggling balls, a ball juggling unicycles, and other variations on the
theme. (By Sunday morning, he had created an Amiga animation of a CBS logo
being shattered by an axe labeled "Hackers 4.0.")
The catalog of personal accomplishments at the conference was dazzling...
present were the founders, authors, or creators of Hypertalk, FORTH, countless
games from Pong to Mazewars, Grateful Dead songs, Mathematica, NASA animations,
the Whole Earth Catalog, dozens of books and musical compositions, Atari, the
Amiga, the concepts of hypermedia and the Dynabook, Computerland, ThinkTank,
FullWrite, ThunderScan, MAC Switcher, the Well, OS/2, the "Hackers" book,
Portal, packet radio, Cromemco, Xanadu, weird bicycles, special effects for
Lucasfilms and "Cosmos," AutoCAD, the Computer Faire, InfoWorld, Dr. Dobb's
Journal, the Intel 8051... and the whole personal computer phenomenon. (A
bunch of crooks, eh, Fred?)
In a place with this much unalloyed wit, humor was pervasive: context
switches and parsing ambiguities were extracted from every speech string, and
the subcultures of the industry's heartland were evident with every wisecrack.
"I'm considering leaving the computer field until UNIX and C are dead,"
observed one fellow, while another described himself as "desperately seeking
parenthesis in a world of semicolons."
And, more than anywhere in a long time, this conference felt like home.
Leaving it for the madness and traffic of Silly Valley was depressing and
overwhelming... and it established a standard of socialization that will
influence our six-month stay in the area.
* * *
Yep, this is a layover -- it's time to make the Winnebiko III. I write now
from a place familiar to long-time readers of this column... WAVEMAKER's house
in Palo Alto. The bike lab is set up, and a string of negotiations is rapidly
redefining the on-board system. I'll save the details for the next column, once
the specification has been frozen. But the whole control console will be
replaced by a new one -- featuring a backlit 640 X 480 VGA display with a
touchscreen, running on a Chips & Technologies 286 supported by a FORTH-based
68000 for bike system control. Soft instruments, CAD, and satellite mapping on
a bicycle... the mind boggles. And when the power's available, it might even
boot as a 386SX running Unix... I've always wanted a unixycle!
I'll spare you the details until it's real -- or until it has become such
an all-engulfing project that I can think of nothing else.
* * *
But I do have a random observation or two. It seems that every time I
wander into a crowd with my bike, someone asks why I keep throwing massive
resources at this insane venture when all good American engineering-literate
36-year-olds should be settling down, raising families, and making payments on
things while maneuvering carefully along the career path. Wellll...
I've sampled that. I've tasted the gritty air of the mineshaft, sensed
the health costs of digging full-time for sparkling nuggets of technology. I
love the stuff; I'm addicted to it; I pedal it like a madman over mountains
just to fiddle with its switches in the wilderness. But dedicate a life, or
even a decade, to the extraction and polish of a single glittering orb? Never.
I want it all. Now.
"But if you ever really want to succeed..." someone began the other day.
Succeed! What does that MEAN, exactly? Simple: forget bottom lines.
Success is simply the ratio of all you put out to all you get back. Period.
You put out some combination of risk, discomfort, time, dedication, hassles,
sweat, ideas, and money. You get back a mixture of pleasure, fun,
satisfaction, friendship, insight, love, sex, power, and money. Debits out...
credits in.
Most people will, upon a moment's reflection, agree with this heartily --
perhaps ordering the credits to reflect their priorities. Sex, money, power...
But the catch is this. Most people see the amount of money as an index
that linearly tracks the rest -- an accurate indicator of success (though not
its only component). This is as misleading as judging the health of America on
the basis of the Gross National Product: every time there's an auto accident,
the GNP goes up a little bit.
And so I would say that yes, yes, I am a success -- even if next month's
bills are still a bit uncertain. I'm living a life of fun, learning, sex, new
friends, and grand adventure. Money drops into my life now and then like
scattered meteorites, brief exciting flashes in the void. But it's enough
(most of the time, anyway), and I'm too busy with projects to notice that my
income is somewhere between the official "poverty level" and a mysterious
national average. Yes, I'd like more. No, I'm not going to do much about it.
Wanna buy a book?
Heh. That was fun. This story has followed me around for a while,
getting edited here and there, traveling like a hitchiker in my laptop and
finding itself now on the 17th floor of the Palmer House in Chicago. Someone
pointed out in the Scan-Tech crowd at McCormick Place today that the
widest-bandwidth communications channel in the world is a 747 jet --
considering the information content of the passengers. (so what's the bod
rate?)
Anyway, I'm here and gone during a single battery discharge curve on this
battered HP, 5,000 air miles with a box of poised electrons, metered
reluctantly with each keystroke to toggle a few gates and release microcalories
as another story reaches escape velocity. My beard grows 1500 angstroms per
nano-millennium... the data collection industry is healthy... and life back in
Palo Alto, from my perspective of this instant, hums like a VCR with the PAUSE
button depressed.
Bike surgery begins Saturday.
Good night.
Steve