I received "The Hacker's Manifesto" from The Mentor himself...
of course I'm very proud of it. Elf Qrin.
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The Conscience of a Hacker
aka The Hacker's Manifesto
by
The Mentor
LOD/LOH
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 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.
+++Mentor+++
Copyright 1986 by Loyd Blankenship (mentor@blankenship.com). All rights
reserved.
The "Hacker's Manifesto" was published for the first time on the e-zine
Phrack Volume One, Issue 7, Phile 3, and then reprinted on Phrack Issue XIV,
File 3 of 9. At the end of the reprint you can read the following comment:
[May the members of the phreak community never forget his words -KL]
