Maybe I am too dismissive/cynical, but my impression is that people who write stuff like this really want to think they are the main character in a movie.
The way it is written is a bit like the the Navy Seal, GNU-Linux copy-pastas.
If you go back and read these after knowing what happened over the last 30 years. It is difficult to take seriously. I feel similarly when reading "A declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".
I think it's pretty cringe, but also that we're expecting an awful lot from a zine article. This is basically the tone of every cDc tfile. Tfile culture was (a male-dominated) Tumblr before there was Tumblr.
It's very full of itself. But I fully understand where it comes from. When you are the only one seeing something in technology that others simply cannot see. When you think about these things in a way that no one else can understand. And when that allows you to do things that no one else thought were possible.
You just see the world in a way that no one else around you does. A world that is between indifferent and hostile to your way of thinking and seeks to assimilate you into a fundamentally incurious, indifferent, uninspired apparatus.
Believe it or not if you are an expert in almost field you will understand things that other people do not. A lot of people in those fields will feel that way you are describing.
There is nothing special about this because you happen to be able to do it with a computer/electronics/network.
You become an expert by tinkering and experimenting.
I understand a lot about how bicycles work because I tinkered and built my own. It isn't exactly the same as hacking, but it is very similar. When you work on old bikes, motorbikes, cars you sometimes have to come up to novel solutions to problems.
The fact that you and the author can't see the similarities is exactly the issue I and others have pointed out.
It is not the same thing, because back in 1986 the "hacker" concept was new, associated with criminality, and not with 'curiosity', information processing and thinking. It is not really the same as bikes and cars, which are around for quite some time and are made of tangible, mechanical stuff, whereas information are just abstract '0s' and '1s'.
I'm am aware of this raid and similar ones. It doesn't make you the main character or really that important. Whenever the EFF post something, I know it will be ignored by almost anyone that has power.
You’re not cynical. The writer is self absorbed and many many people became “hackers” for similar ”cool” reasons.
Really you’re all just generic and overplayed programmers. It’s the same thing that causes programmers to call themselves ninjas and rockstars while someone like a chemical engineer doesn’t.
I think the Ninja stuff tbh comes from like a lot of pseudo-eastern philosophy that people buy into when it comes to programming and/or videos games e.g. the CSS Zen Garden.
Plumber is a category as well. The difference is that plumbers do not gather once a year to declare the Eternal Principles of Pipe. There is no Council of the Wrench. No one is arguing about the True Spirit of the Elbow Joint. They simply tighten the fitting and go home.
According to AI (so question it), The Mentor was 21 when he wrote this. There's something about the early 20s that makes many people believe that the world has deeper significance and scope than it really does. It can be a delusional time. This is also, coincidentally, when people who get schizophrenia often start to show symptoms. I'm not saying The Mentor has this particular affliction, I'm saying that the early 20s is a trigger that brings out a lot of things in people, which they later get over.
there is direct evidence that disorders like schizophrenia and bipolar tend to manifest in the early 20s. generalizing that to everyone's experience of their 20s is obviously a bit tenuous
The last of your prefrontal cortex's major systems come online in your earlier 20s, which can lead to bipolar or schizophrenia if those systems are disordered. In most, it just happens to lead to "your first deep thoughts about the broader world and your significance in it" and may lead to writing youthful cringepieces like "The Conscience of a Hacker". It's kind of like a second puberty. The underlying cause is the same, if the results are vastly different.
That's just like your opinion man, I see it through rose coloured glasses as a poem from more naive times back when some folks still had some hope... This was way before vulture capitalism fucked everything up you know, or at least that's how I remember it but I was like 10.
Not everyone was into this hopeful vision of cyberspace though, Masters of Doom comes to mind.
You’re right (as someone a bit older but also with rose-tinted glasses).
There was a feeling of hope on the Internet at the time that this was a communication tool that would bring us all together. I do feel like some of that died around 9/11 but that it was Facebook and the algorithms that really killed it. That is where the Internet transitioned from being about showcasing the best of us to showcasing the worst of us. In the name of engagement.
The way it is written is a bit like the the Navy Seal, GNU-Linux copy-pastas.
If you go back and read these after knowing what happened over the last 30 years. It is difficult to take seriously. I feel similarly when reading "A declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace".