textfiles/fun/CAA/gecaa-47

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