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The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

phrack.org

21–30 of 141 posts

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#21
post #13
post #2

Why not call it the [edit] phreaker manifesto? Particularly when it's on a magazine called Phrack?

Those guys were called 'phreaks', not 'phrakers". BTW, Apple was founded by two phreaks.

Apple wouldn't exist if not for Allen's original Blue Box Tone Generator. It's what funded them.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#22
post #16

Hackers...the movie. "their only crime was curiosity". I suspect that line was lifted from this. As for the Manifesto itself, for the most part, looking back, this rings true. I was there... in the 80's...with colourful boxes, acoustic couplers, and pages and pages of phone numbers. I never had the sense of community this document describes...it seemed like a much more solitary pursuit, but you picked up things if yo…

I wouldn't say 'lifted'. They were straight reading manifesto itself, not pretending that it's something else. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwozkbmjzC4

Oh, I see. That line was used in the movie posters at the time. Yep, true - it was based on manifesto :)

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#24

There was a time when "hacker" meant "a wizard's wizard"; and a time where it meant a digital vandal over POTS lines; and a time where reclaiming the word "hacker" became fashionable; and important computer hackers began quietly wearing the word; and then there was the time where marketers became growth hackers and musicians became harmony hackers. But the digital vandals never fully wrested away the word from AI lab…

and a time where it meant a digital vandal over POTS lines;

Well, those were "phreakers."

In the 70's, "hacker" was a person who "hacked" out the credits from public domain software and put their own name in it for resale. And you bought it anyway because software was so hard to come by.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#25
There was a time when being a hacker meant one understood a system and bent the rules to get that system to do something else. These days, being a hacker seems to mean producing crap and not taking any responsability for it.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#26
post #12

And then decades later, those hackers built the infrastructure for systems of surveillance and control that would have just been a wet dream for those "1950's technobrains," and modern hackers embrace racism and extremism rather than transcending them, and complain that the internet liberating humanity from the shackles of corporate information and communication control has just caused the normies to ruin its quirky…

Maybe modern underground hackers are embracing racism and extremism. But think about the disconnect between the media's reporting of hackers and what hackers actually were even twenty years ago. A hacker is, according to the news, whatever makes society hate them more. I doubt anybody smart enough to break something miles away with just a keyboard is stupid enough to believe one race is more or less than another.

Disclaimer: I'm not a hacker.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#27
post #12

And then decades later, those hackers built the infrastructure for systems of surveillance and control that would have just been a wet dream for those "1950's technobrains," and modern hackers embrace racism and extremism rather than transcending them, and complain that the internet liberating humanity from the shackles of corporate information and communication control has just caused the normies to ruin its quirky…

I would disagree that modern hackers embrace racism and bigotry. I feel like that's more of the "unwashed masses" on the Internet.

I take it you're not familiar with GNAA... hackers are just people like everybody else, nothing about them is inherently anti-racist.

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#28
post #21
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those guys were called 'phreaks', not 'phrakers". BTW, Apple was founded by two phreaks.

Apple wouldn't exist if not for Allen's original Blue Box Tone Generator. It's what funded them.

To correct, it was actually Wozniak that was assembling the phreaking boxes.

Apparently they made a revenue of 3k from the venture[1].

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Apple_Inc.#1975%E2%...

Re: The Hacker’s Manifesto (1986)

#30
post #12

And then decades later, those hackers built the infrastructure for systems of surveillance and control that would have just been a wet dream for those "1950's technobrains," and modern hackers embrace racism and extremism rather than transcending them, and complain that the internet liberating humanity from the shackles of corporate information and communication control has just caused the normies to ruin its quirky…

>modern hackers embrace racism and extremism rather than transcending them

Pardon my ignorance, but can you elaborate on what you mean by this?

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