%/%The Conscience of a Hacker/%/

                                      by

                               +++The Mentor+++

                          Written on January 8, 1986
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        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 forthe 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 callus 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 Mentor+++