The actors in this drama are often dehumanized and made out to be people of pure malice. These are often people who are completely misunderstood, or even worse, misrepresented by the media. I have met several people who the media would consider hackers. Some of these people do fit the stereotype that is portrayed by the media, but the fact is that most of these people do not. They are simply people who are striving for knowledge in a society that does not promote the free access of information. These are the people who were never allowed to follow their curiosity. They were told to follow the paths and the curriculum that was laid in front of them, because people older and wiser than them had formed them. Many people were stunted and lost their drive for knowledge, others broke free. These people are not at all a bunch of hoodlums living in run-down basements trying to destroy networks.
Hackers are everywhere, from every walk of life, every type of lifestyle. Being a hacker has nothing to do with race, religion, or sex. It has but one criterion. A burning desire to aquire knowledge: to know whatever it is that you do not know. It is a quest that can never end, and I believe it is the noblest. It is an unwritten rule that one does not just call him or herself a hacker. The rule says that it is a title that is bestowed on you. The fact is that being a hacker is something that you are born as. It is neither earned nor bestowed. It has nothing to do with power or control. It is simply a way of being. Are you a hacker?
The following is the hackers' creed that was referred to in the movie HACKERS. Read the creed and judge for yourself. It is a description of what many have experienced time and time again - the quest for knowledge crushed. But for many it cannot be driven out, for you see, knowledge yearns to be free.
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.
+++The Mentor+++