Console Cowboys: The Complex Evolution of Representations of Hackers in Media

8/6/2019 Console Cowboys: The Complex Evolution of Representations of Hackers in Media

1/42

Console CowboysThe Complex Evolution of

Representations of Hackers in MediaObi Obermeyer

5/12/2011


2/42

Obermeyer, 1

Console Cowboys: The Complex Evolution of Representations of

Hackers in Media1

Introduction

Computers are a ubiquitous part of the daily American experience. Many of us surf, send,

search, link, and print every day. As terms like personal computer and Internet have become a part

of the American vernacular terms like hacker and virus have become part of Americas shared fears.

Rising out of relative obscurity like the computers upon which they practiced their craft, hackers have

occupied a larger and larger portion of the popular mindshare as computers have entered the

workplace, home, and finally our pockets. In 1960, the Sabre network was the only commercially used

computer network and ARPAnet, the predecessor to the modern Internet was yet to be realized.2 The

first entry for hacker in the Oxford English Dictionary with an origin in the United States is a person

with an enthusiasm for programming or using computers as an end in itself. 3 Over the next quarter of a

century that definition would change to a person who uses his skill with computers to try to gain

unauthorized access to computer files or networks.4 This latest definition is the one that been

popularized by news media and films. Hackers in these media are male computer criminals. While the

male characterization is largely true any amount of research into the subject of hackers shows that

computer criminals are only one small part of a rich hacker culture and history. 5

The first definition of hacker in fact from the late 1950s when a young group of technology

enthusiastic students organized around a model railroad club at M.I.T. began hacking at computers at

1Gibson, William. Neuromancer. (Ace Books, New York) 1984

2Sabre Travel Network, Sabre History, Sabre Travel Network,

http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/home/about/history/ (accessed May, 10, 2011)

Hafner, Kate & Lyons, Matthew. Where the Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. (Touchstone), 19963Oxford English Dictionary, hacker,n. OED,http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/83045(Accessed

May 9, 2011)4

ibid5

Douglas Thomas, 63
http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/home/about/history/http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/83045http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/83045http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/83045http://www.oed.com/viewdictionaryentry/Entry/83045http://www.sabretravelnetwork.com/home/about/history/


3/42

Obermeyer, 2

the facility, not in a malicious and trespassing manner but rather a clever and paradigm breaking way.6

To them hacking was not defined as gaining unauthorized access to computers but rather as thoughtful

and creative manipulation of computers and their code. Many of these young men were later a part of

the group that helped companies like Apple and Microsoft get their start. When the newspapers began

using the term hacker to describe young men committing the digital equivalent of trespassing (or

worse breaking and entering) in the early 1980s the original hackers, sometimes called white-hats (a

term for legal/ethical hackers) could do nothing but lay down the label they had used for themselves for

the last two decades.7Some of them tried to popularize the term cracker for their younger and more

criminal counterparts, but to no avail.8 Hackers, good or bad are still often both labeled with the term

hacker.

Beyond newspaper reporting that has characterized hackers as criminals there exists a wealth of

other popular media in which hackers have a role. There are numerous films and novels in which

hackers have played major, minor, protagonist, and antagonist roles. Many films have very narrow

interpretations of hackers that often echo the cybercriminal tilt of popular newspaper articles. Other

films like Hackers and War Games inspired entire generations of hackers.9Snow Crash and Neuromancer

are just two examples of the cyberpunk literary genre that have gone through numerous printings and

have explored the intersection between humans and technology and whose volumes have given us

words such as cyberspace that have entered the popular lexicon.10 This fact alone reflects the reality

that the relationship between technology, hackers, and their representations is far more complex than

might be commonly assumed.

6Levy, Steven. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution. (OReilly Media), 10

7Poulsen, Kevin Lee. Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cybercrime Underground. (Crown

Publishers, New York), 358

Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral & the Bazaar: Musings on Linux and Open Source by an Accidental Revolutionary.

(OReilly Media), 1969

Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture. (University of Minnesota Press) 200210

Gibson, William. Neuromancer. (Ace Books, New York) 1984, 4


4/42

Obermeyer, 3

Hackers are an enigmatic group with a winding and convoluted history that has been reported

on but rarely analyzed in any great detail. Books like Steven Levys Hackers: Heroes of the Computer

Revolution, John Markoff and Kate Hafners Cyberpunk, and Matthew Lyon and Kate Hafners Where the

Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internetall tell one part of the hacker story but do not interpret

or analyze the events in any great historical detail.11 The assortment of popular media representations

and the lack of any significant amount of historical analysis beg not only for research focused on the

history of hackers but also analysis of the popular media representations of hackers and their history.

Essentially, Who are the hackers, how have their representations in media evolved, and how has the

public perception been affected by their representations in newspapers, film, and literature?

Hackers, it turns out, reflect a counter-culture formed in opposition to the corporate and

government values surrounding technology that has evolved over time. Representations of hackers in

the press and popular culture are largely ignorant of their history and culture, and instead focus on the

technological and criminal aspects of hackers. Newspaper representations of hackers have been greatly

influenced by the film representation of hackers and unfortunately become focused solely on the

criminal and technological aspects of hackers. Because of their wide readership and frequent publication

newspapers have held an inordinate amount of influence on the publics perception of hackers. Film

representations in contrast, while copious, are released at no particular frequency and almost always

couch the representation of hackers into a pre-existing genre like heist or science fiction films. This has

meant that while there are films that have influenced the publics perception of hackers, films have

generally held less sway over that perception because of the placement of hackers into pre-existing

genres . Literature representations of hackers in science fiction have also held little influence over the

11Levy, Steven. Hackers

Markoff, John & Hafner, Kate. Cyberpunk: Outlaws and Hackers on the Computer Frontier. (Simon & Schuster),

1991

Hafner, Kate & Lyons, Matthew. Where the Wizards Stay Up Late (Touchstone)


5/42

Obermeyer, 4

publics perception of hackers because of its representations of hackers and technology in a frequently

dystopian way. The fantastic settings of science fiction literature also make it less likely for their

audience to associate hackers in the novels of science fiction with the hackers of the real world.

Consequently, because of the various ways in which the media, film, and literature have failed to

represent hacker history and culture the public is also largely ignorant of that history and culture,

resulting in a lack of awareness of the complex and often positive ways hackers have influenced the

development of new technologies.

Methods & Sources

The first steps to answering these questions are to explore the historiography of hackers and

establish a working timeline of their history upon which to locate the various representations of hackers

in popular media. This process was a largely obvious one consisting of scouring the stacks, googling, and

a lot of World Cat, LexisNexis, and ProQuest searches. This revealed one major difficulty in trying to

build a set of secondary sources. That is, the line between hacking and hackers is very thin. Often these

searches would yield works that were meant to inform the reader how to hack or how to protect oneself

from being hacked, or even more likely, would tell the story of one specific instance of hacking. Books

like The Art of Intrusion or Hacking: The Art of Exploitation are designed to show examples of hacking

and to teach the reader how to duplicate them, being always preceded by a message warning the reader

that breaking into someones computer is against the law.12 This complicated the search for useful,

historical works. One book however went beyond all the how-to manuals and was instrumental in

establishing a history of hackers. Steven Levys Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution13

tells the

story of the hackers from their beginnings at M.I.T. up through the early 1980s when the book was first

12Mitnick, Kevin. The Art of Intrusion: The Real Stories Behind the Exploits of Hackers, Intruders, and Decievers.

(Wiley Publishing) 2005

Erickson, Jon. Hacking: The Art of Exploitation. (William Pollock) 200813

Levy, Steven. Hackers


6/42

Obermeyer, 5

published. That Levy covers hackers until 1983 is evidence that Levy is not a historian per se, but rather

a reporter who was reporting with more perspective than a typical daily article.

This kind of semi-historical book, one with all the narrative and none (or very little) of the

interpretation or analysis is common in the bevy of books on hackers. Yet, for all the lack of

interpretation or analysis they are still extremely helpful in establishing themes, providing dates, and

yielding more sources. The other books mentioned previously, Cyberpunkand Where the Wizards Stay

Up Late: The Origins of the Internetalso follow this same pattern. Across all of these semi-historical and

journalistic works it is commonplace for the context to be placed in the lives of people involved rather

than one that places the events of hacker history in a sufficient historical context. It should come as no

surprise then that the authors of these books are not historians, but reporters for the New York Times.14

Its interesting that some of the creators of newspaper representations, a part of the primary sources for

this project, should also be largely involved with providing the most useful secondary sources. Fire in the

Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer15

the book upon which the popular TV movie Pirates of

Silicon Valley16

is based was also written by reporters. Paul Freiberger and Michael Swaine, the authors,

were reporters at the popular industry magazine Infoworldwhen the PC revolution was taking place.17

So was John Markoff, who provided the foreword for the book and who provided his own reporting on

the PC revolution in his book What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the

Personal Computer Industry.18 Steve Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Inc. also provides his observations on

14New York Times, Katie Hafner. The New York Times.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/katie_hafner/index.html(Accessed April 27,

2011)

New York Times, John Markoff. The New York Times.

http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.html(Accessed April 27,

2011)15

Freiberger, Paul & Swaine, Michael. Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer. (McGraw-Hill), 200016

Pirates of Silicon Valley. Directed by Martyn Burke. 199917

Freiberger, Paul & Swaine, Michael. Fire in the Valley, xi18

Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.

(Viking Penguin) 2005
http://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/katie_hafner/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/m/john_markoff/index.htmlhttp://topics.nytimes.com/topics/reference/timestopics/people/h/katie_hafner/index.html


7/42

Obermeyer, 6

hackers and the computer industry in his book iWoz: Computer Geek to Cult Icon19. This book provides a

slight differentiation from the pattern of reporters reporting over time in that Wozniak witnessed these

events first hand. Yet it falls in line with the other sources in that it does not interpret or analyze any of

that relayed history. These books, whether written by reporters or by participants in the history

themselves, and which are useful in presenting a narrative of history cannot be called works of history.

Thus these books cannot constitute the historiography of hackers as they are not of a completely

historical nature.

The most relevant existing historiography consists of works in subject matter are works that are

concerned with the history of technology. Works like Paul E. CeruzzisA History of Modern Computing

takes a much more traditional historical approach by placing the development of the computer in the

context of code-breaking in WWII and the Cold War and by asking a research question: Why do we

inherently understand that computers are a different class of useful machines than washing machines?20

He presents a number of possibilities for why this may be so in his thesis but concludes in the end that

he does not have an answer to his question. Other histories of computing are like many of the books

available on hacking in that they pay much more attention to the math and technology aspects of the

history than they do the relevant social, political, or cultural context. An example of this is Georges

Ifrahs The Universal History of Computing which covers number systems dating from the beginning of

civilization to the invention of the pocket calculator in the 1960s.21 As a testament to the mathematical

nature of Ifrahs book he includes pages upon pages of diagrams showcasing historical number

systems.22

19Smith, Gina & Wozniak, Steve. iWoz- Computer Geek to Cult: How I Invented the Personal computer, co-Founded

Apple, and Had Fun Doing It. (W.W. Norton & Company). 200620Ceruzzi, Paul E.A History of Modern Computing. Cambrige, Massachusetts ( The MIT Press) 2003. 1221

Ifrah, Georges. The Universal History of Computing: From the Abacus to the Quantum Computer. (Wiley

Publishing). 2001 29722

ibid, 26-63


8/42

Obermeyer, 7

This is not to say that Ceruzzis book is the only one which takes the form of a traditional

historical monograph, but it is a prime example of the historiography that exists for hackers. It is more

often the technology that hackers helped produce then it is the hackers themselves that have had their

history told, analyzed, and interpreted. Hackers have had their stories told by reporters who have long

been watching the computer industry and the exploits of hackers and they have often told their stories

themselves, but the stories of the people behind hacking rather than the technology, have rarely been

analyzed or interpreted in a historical fashion or understood in their larger historical context. This

shallow historiography has had two effects. One, it has made this study very difficult, and two, even if a

member of the public wished to educate themselves on the history or culture of hackers they would

likely believe they had found an authoritative or responsible history when really, they had only received

a piece of a very complex and little researched or organized puzzle. This tradition of semi-historical

histories has contributed to the publics ignorance of hacker history and culture.

The second step in finding patterns between hackers history and their representations in the

media was to identify a collection of primary sources from newspaper, film, and literature. With national

total newspaper circulation at 58,882,000 total newspapers in 1960 and 45,653,000 total newspapers in

2009 it would be impossible to sift through every daily newspaper in search of articles pertaining to

hackers.23 Instead The New York Times, with the third largest readership in the nation, was used as a

source for examples of representations of hackers in the news media. With the set of articles narrowed

the process of finding articles about hackers was straightforward. A number of database searches by

year and subject matter yielded enough articles from which to draw conclusions about representations

of hackers in the news.

23Newspaper Association of America. Trends and Numbers: Total Paid Circulation.

http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspx(Accessed April 26, 2011)
http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspxhttp://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspxhttp://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspx


9/42

Obermeyer, 8

Selecting a set of films to analyze proved to be more complicated. To start the collection a quick

Google search was used to find lists of the best hacker movies.24 The various lists yielded had a

number of films in common, usually containing Tron (1982), War Games (1983), The Matrix(1999),

Hackers(1995), Pirates of Silicon Valley(1999), ), Takedown(2000),andAntitrust(2001). At first glance, an

article published in the International Journal of Internet Technology and Secured Transactions titled,

Forty Years of Movie Hacking: Considering the Potential Implications of the Popular Media

Representation of Computer Hackers from 1968 to 2008 seems to be attempting to answer the same

questions that this project has set out to regarding hacker representations in film.25 In fact the author,

Damian Gordon, is more interested in the possible educational aspects of hacking in films than their

historical significance. The article does however provide a list of 50 films with hackers, a short plot

summary and argument for inclusion on the list, and most importantly a very interesting way of

organizing all of the films. At the end of the article Gordon provides a table consisting of every hacker

film on the list, the year of its release, the genre, the names of all hackers in the film, and their

occupation. The most significant insight for this project was the organization of hacker films into

previously existing genres of film.

Lastly, a set of novels which include hackers had to be selected. A popular genre of science

fiction called Cyberpunk often represents hackers. The tone of Cyberpunk literature is often described

as being high-tech, and low-life. 26 Because of the amount of time that consuming and analyzing a

novel can take the size of the set had to be relatively small. Google again provided quick results when

the search phrase most influential cyberpunk books was entered, yielding an Amazon guide titled So

24Google. Best Hacker Movies.http://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-

8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a(Accessed March 20, 2011)25

Gordon, Damian. Forty Years of Movie Hacking: Considering the Potential Implications of the Popular Media

Representation of Computer Hackers from 1968 to 2008. (ITST) 201026

Google. high tech low lifehttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-

8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a(Accessed March 20, 2011)
http://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-ahttp://www.google.com/search?q=best+hacker+movies&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a


10/42

Obermeyer, 9

Youd like toRead the Best Cyberpunk Books.27

If publishers released sales numbers for books then a

more complete and accurate finding of the most popular books could be produced. The books listed on

the guide do however echo those that I had informally determined to be the most influential. The three

books include Snow Crash (1992) by Neal Stephenson, Neuromancer(1984) by William Gibson, and Do

Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) by Phillip K. Dick (the book that inspired the cult classic film

Bladerunner).28

The process of selecting primary and secondary sources from which to work was complicated

throughout by the presence of books, films, and articles that are all closely related to hacking but do not

necessarily constitute a representation of it. For example, while the film Bladerunnerand the novel Do

Androids Dream of Electric Sheep are both considered cyberpunk and offer an interesting representation

of the potential and risk of technology neither are greatly concerned with hackers themselves, and thus

cannot be included in the analysis of representations of hackers in literature. The fluctuating definition

of who are hackers and what they do is reflected in the nebulous nature of media that has represented

them on the screen and on the page.

The frequent release of films that represent hackers complicates the decision of when to draw a

line in the canon of hacker films. The fact that films representing hackers are so frequently released

gives credence to the importance of a study of this nature. In his article, Forty Years of Movie Hacking:

Considering the Potential Implications of the Popular Media Representation of Computer Hackers from

1968 to 2008, Damian Gordon identified 50 separate films released between 1968 and 2008 that can be

27Google. Most Influential Cyberpunk Bookshttp://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-

8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-

a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-

p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6 (Accessed April 3, 2011)

Amazon. Read the Best Cyberpunk books

http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/2K4TDLFCNB217(Accessed April 3, 2011)28

IMDB, Blade Runner Trivia.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/trivia(Accessed April 10, 2011)
http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/2K4TDLFCNB217http://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/2K4TDLFCNB217http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/triviahttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/triviahttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/triviahttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083658/triviahttp://www.amazon.com/gp/richpub/syltguides/fullview/2K4TDLFCNB217http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6http://www.google.com/search?q=high+tech+low+life&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#sclient=psy&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=OZ8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US%3Aofficial&source=hp&q=most+influential+cyberpunk+books&aq=0p&aqi=p-p1g4&aql=&oq=&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.&fp=38378e84586d88e6


11/42

Obermeyer, 10

considered as hacker films.29 Since then many more films and books have been released that could be

included in the hacker canon including the films The Social Networkand Tron: Legacy, the former

showing its significance with its Academy Award nominations and the latter by the fact that it is a sequel

to one of the earliest hacker films.30 Novels like Daniel Suarezs Daemon and its sequel Freedom also

contribute to the annals of hacker literature.31Other books, like Kevin Lee Poulsens Kingpin and Joseph

Menns Fatal System Errortake a long investigative look into the current state of the hacker and

cybercriminal underground and fit exactly into the tradition laid down by John Markoff and Katie Hafner

in their books all narrative, no analysis.32 It is the responsibility of the historian not to analyze the

events of life too quickly yet one cannot help but be tempted to do so when more newspaper articles,

films, and books that represent hackers are released at such a constant pace. If these new

representations cannot be included in the analysis of this project they can at least be pointed to as

evidence of the relevance and importance of a work on this subject.

Computers before Hackers

As already noted one limitation of the semi-historical and journalistic secondary sources like

Cyberpunk, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, and What the Dormouse Said, is that they

provide insufficient historical context. Levy, for instance, places the story in the biographical context of

the hackers lives and openly says that his book is in no way a formal history of the computer era, or of

the particular arenas on which he focuses.33Of course hackers didnt just manifest in the halls of M.I.T.

Hackers like anything else were the result of the social, cultural, and political context of the time. IN the

29 Gordon, Damian. Forty Years of Movie Hacking30

IMDB. The Social Network. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/ (Accessed March 20, 2011)

IMDB. Tron: Legacy.http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/(Accessed March 20, 2011)31

Suarez, Daniel. Daemon. (Dutton). 2009

Suarez, Daniel. Freedom. (Dutton), 201032

Poulsen, Kevin Lee. Kingpin32

Menn, Joseph. Fatal System Error: The Hunt for the New Crime Lords Who Are Bringing Down the Internet.

(PublicAffairs Books), 2010.33

Levy, Steven. Hackers, preface
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1104001/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1285016/


12/42

Obermeyer, 11

absence of an existing historiography of hackers, the following section provides a necessary foundation

for understanding the history of hackers by analyzing the history of computers before hackers and the

political scene which gave rise to them.

In the 1950s computers were so large that they required rooms of space and often a full time

staff to make sure the machines didnt overheat.34 Even if the physical limitations of computers were not

a factor the idea of putting a computer in a household was ridiculous. Who would need a computer? The

paradigm for the use of computers in the 1950s and earlier was drastically different from the

interactivity of the machines we use today. Instead all data was batched processed by pun ching holes

in cards, placing the cards in the machine, and receiving the results, freshly punched, onto yet more

cards. It could often take days to get the results of a program.35 While this way of entering data into a

computer was not what defined the nature of batch processing computers it was certainly a symptom of

the contemporary paradigm for computing. IBM, probably the most recognizable brand from this era,

perfectly describes the target market and use of computers in the 1950s in its name: International

Business Machines.36 IBM was such a large part of the market for commercial computing machines that

emerged out of WWII that in comparison to its competitors it was called Snow White (IBM) and the

Seven Dwarfs *their competitors+.37IBM was the landof blue pinstripe suits and relied more on a

conservative approach of proven concepts and careful, aggressive marketing than they did innovation

for commercial success.38 Computers were viewed as the most recent development in the heritage of

industrial age machines. They merely accelerated the slow manual process of calculation. In essence

computers were the cotton gin or printing press of data.

34Levy, Steven. Hackers, 4

35Hafner, Kate & Lyons, Matthew. Where the Wizards Stay Up Late

36IBM. About IBM.http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/(Accessed April 25, 2011)

37Freiberger, Paul & Swaine, Michael. Fire in the Valley, valley 9

38Ibid

Levy, Steven. Hackers, 30
http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/http://www.ibm.com/ibm/us/en/


13/42

Obermeyer, 12

Few could afford the astronomical financial or spatial cost of these mammoth calculators. For

all the manufacturers of computers there were really only two customers: the banks, to help eliminate

the 3 hours each afternoon that banks would close to manually process checks and the military for use

in rocketry and missile defense systems.39 The latter of the two had funded a number of computers in

the past; the Navy had supported the code-cracking Mark I during World War II, the famous ENIAC

(Electronic Numerical Integrator And Calculator) had been funded by the Army, and a missile defense

computer named Whirlwind had been co-funded by the Navy and Air Force.40 Where today we have

phones that weigh a matter of ounces, cost a few hundred dollars and are used for communication and

entertainment the ENIAC cost $6,000,000 (adjusted for inflation), weighed 27 tons, and had a processing

speed of 100 kHz, and was used to calculate artillery firing tables.41 Computer research was to benefit

further from military funding. In 1957 when the Soviets successfully launched the Sputnik satellite it

shocked the public that the enemy had advanced so far technologically. Suddenly the post-war optimism

was gone. As Kate Hafner and Matthew Lyon put it in Where the Wizards Stay Up Late, Sputnik was

proof of Russias ability to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, the pessimists said, and it was just a

matter of time before the Soviets would threaten the United States.

42

President Eisenhower was not as

concerned as his constituency; he knew a great deal more than he could say publicly.43

The president was however set on establishing a central organization to direct the nations

missile and rocket programs. To create the National Air and Space Administration however, would take

time.44 The President and his new Defense Secretary Neil McElroy wanted to implement something

fast. That something materialized as ARPA, the Advanced Research Projects Agency. From 1957 to 1958

39Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said, 2-3

40Hafner, Kate & Lyons, Matthew. Where the Wizards Stay Up Late

41Josh Kopplin. An Illustrated History of Computers; Part 4.

http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htm(Accessed May 1, 2011)42

Hafner, Kate & Lyons, Matthew. Where the Wizards Stay Up Late, 943

Ibid.44

Ibid, 11
http://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htmhttp://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htmhttp://www.computersciencelab.com/ComputerHistory/HistoryPt4.htm


14/42

Obermeyer, 13

ARPA enjoyed the $5 billion budget that came with control of all of the nations air and space

programs.45But when NASA was enacted by law all of ARPAs high -profile contracts were stripped from

it. Its mission was unclear. ARPAs mission was redefined to long-term research goals.46 The military

branches had only ever been interested in short-term goals that could be quickly realized. Setting out

with this redefinition of its mission ARPA drifted more and more into the possibilities of computers for

missile defense, nuclear test detection, and command and control of military resources.47 ARPA was

funding computer research at academic institutions all over the country. The possibilities of computers

really opened up when one group of researchers created a whole new way of using a computer called

time-sharing where each individual user only used a part of the computers total power and results of

programs were returned as quickly as possible. This fundamentally new way of using computers was

created by the hackers at M.I.T. whom were funded by ARPA in 1961.48

When a young group of enthusiasts started calling themselves hackers at M.I.T. in 1958 the size

and cost of computers had been limiting them to the few institutions that could afford them.

Consequently computers were designed to serve these institutions, namely the military, banks, and

universities. The idea that these bulk calculators would serve any purpose for a single person was

considered ridiculous. But the hackers who would form out of a shared rejection of the government and

corporate culture that surrounded technology would use their enthusiasm and creativity would to help

create a whole new way of looking at computers.

45Hafner, Kate & Lyons, Matthew. Where the Wizards Stay Up Late, 13

46Ibid.

47Ibid, 14

48Ibid



15/42

Obermeyer, 14

History of the Hackers

In Levys history of the original hackers and in Douglas Thomass Hacker Culture the authors

refer to generations of hackers. From the organization of Levys book and Thomass discussion of the

differences between generations it is possible to identify 5 or 6 generations of hackers over their 53 year

existence (1958-2011).49 These generations and the years during which they were most active are

charted in the timeline below. 50

There are a number of complications to categorizing hackers into generations. The first is that

there has been very little historical research done that provides data that can support any significant

historical argument concerning the years during which each generation has been active or the historical

context in which they were active. Only the brief historical context available in the highly journalistic

works of Levy, Hafner, Markoff, and Lyons support this periodization of generations. The most

important way to improve this timeline would be to obtain oral histories from the hackers themselves.


50The dates are based upon those given in the sections of Levys and Thomass book that covers those respective

generations. The latest generation of hackers listed is speculative as it is still so recent. More research needs to be

done to make this timeline more authoritative but this one is given to help organize the ideas laid out in this paper.


16/42

Obermeyer, 15

However, even this would carry difficulties with it in that many hackers have disagreed over what does

and does not constitute hacking as well as who is and isnt a hacker.51 This philosophy or the hacker

ethic as Steven Levy defines it, is the thread that ties all the generations of hackers together. 52 Each

generation has simply interpreted the hacker ethic in accordance to the political, social, and cultural

context of its time.

The M.I.T. hackers, being the first of their kind, were the first to identify with this hacker ethic.

It was not an agreement that these young students at M.I.T. all adhered to. Levy argues that the

precepts of this revolutionary Hacker Ethic were not so much debated and discussed as silently agreed

upon.53

The philosophy grew out of the hackers devotion to their work and the new technology being

made available to them, and was facilitated by the small size of their setting, or as Levy refers to it their

monastic setting. 54 Thomas summarizes the hacker ethic in Hacker Culture as having six major tenets:

1. Access to computer- and anything which might teach you something about

the way the world works- should be unlimited and total. Always yield to the

Hands-On Imperative!

2. All information should be free.

3. Mistrust Authority- Promote Decentralization

4. Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees,

age, race, or position.

5. You can create art and beauty on your computer.

6. Computers can change your life for the better.55

51Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture, 15


53Ibid.




17/42

Obermeyer, 16

In a setting so safe, a university laboratory with nearly unlimited government funding the hackers had

little difficulty in strictly adhering to this ethic.56 They

would pull pranks to get access to university computers.

They created videogames, music, and telephone pranks on

computers that cost millions of dollars.57 The hackers

became so devoted to maximizing the utility in their code

that they gave up on regular work days and instead worked

in phases that consisted of 30 hours of work and after

collapsing, 12 hours of sleep. 58 Yet for all of their pranks,

and neurosis the hackers at M.I.T. helped shape the future of the computer, creating and helping to

realize the idea of an interactive and personal computer by creating the timesharing system by which

multiple users could leverage the power of one large machine both interactively and simultaneously.59

Levy writes, So by the early sixties, MIT had obtained a long-range grant for its time-sharing project60

For this project, ARPA gave the M.I.T. lab three million dollars a year, roughly 30 times the lab s previous

budget.61 ARPA saw computers as a tool for the command and control of military assets, one that

seemed endlessly promising.62 Batch processing would not due for a task of this sort. Computers

needed to be accessed in real time. Timesharing was a part of realizing that, making it very easy for

people to share one computer. The true goal however was to allow people to share many computers.63

In an attempt to reach that goal ARPA would create one of the first computer networks, the predecessor

to the Internet, the ARPAnet.



58Ibid, 65

59Ibid, 58

60Ibid

61Ibid


63Ibid

21 Peter Samson and Dan Edwards two M.I.T.

hackers, playing the game Spacewar. It was

developed by the hackers for the first version of

the Digital Equipment Corporations Programmed

Data Processor. 1962


18/42

Obermeyer, 17

Levy argues that the ARPAnet, the predecessor to the Internet, was greatly influenced by the

hackers and their ethic, in that it among its values was the belief that systems should be

decentralized, encourage exploration, and urge a free flow of information.64 Thus not only did the

original hackers contribute to and help realize the idea of a computer for everyone but they also

helped shape the ARPAnet and consequently the Internet. In this way the legacy of the original hackers

would not only be carried on by the second generation of hardware hackers who created the personal

computer in the 1970s, but also the third and fourth generations of hackers who would explore

telephone lines and the Internet in the 1980s and 1990s.

The early digital monastery that these hackers existed in did not last. In 1973 in an attempt to

spread the responsibility of basic research among non-military organizations, the Mansfield

Amendment passed requiring that all defense research be associated with military applications.65 This

effectively dried up the funds for basic computer research at the M.I.T. lab. 66 One hacker recalled,

Before *in the sixties], the attitude was, Heres these new machines, lets see what they can do. Now

we had to justify according to national goals.67 He and other hackers realized that they had been living

in an unsustainable digital utopia which they had only been able to create because of military funds.

Slowly but surely the original hackers moved west to pursue jobs in Silicon Valley and while they

remained active in the technology industry it would be a new generation of hackers that would be

most active during the 1970s. Douglas Thomas writes,

Within a decade, the old school had moved to the Silicon Valley and started to build an


65Center for American Progress. Origins of Dated Federal R&D Policy

http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/07/origins-of-dated-federal-rd-policy/(Accessed May 10, 2011)

National Science Board. The Mansfield Amendment.

http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2000/nsb00215/nsb50/1970/mansfield.html(Accessed May 10, 2011)66


Ibid, 148
http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/07/origins-of-dated-federal-rd-policy/http://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/07/origins-of-dated-federal-rd-policy/http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2000/nsb00215/nsb50/1970/mansfield.htmlhttp://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2000/nsb00215/nsb50/1970/mansfield.htmlhttp://www.nsf.gov/nsb/documents/2000/nsb00215/nsb50/1970/mansfield.htmlhttp://www.scienceprogress.org/2008/07/origins-of-dated-federal-rd-policy/


19/42

Obermeyer, 18

industry that would look and operate increasingly less like the labs at MIT and Harvard and more

like the corporations and organizations against which the 1960s hackers had rebelled.68

The next generation of hackers, the Hardware Hackers, located on the West coast, held

meetings in each others homes to swap tips and parts, and perused junkyards looking for pieces with

which to build computers. According to Levy, these hackers not only lived by the Hacker Ethic but saw a

need to spread that gospel as widely as possible.69 The means by which

to do this was the computer, but without the funding that the M.I.T.

hackers enjoyed it soon became necessary for hackers to form

corporations to manufacture and market their machines. The

corporations that rose out of this generation include Apple Computer

and Microsoft, two of the most important technology companies in the

world. This transition, from university labs, to household computer

clubs, to corporations would mark, as Thomas writes, the dividing

point between old-school hackers of the 1960s and 1970s and the new-

school hackers of the 1980s and 1990s.70 The hardware hackers had

been rebellious like the hackers at M.I.T.; they had been couched in

much of the counterculture that had surrounded Berkeley in the 1970s, but when the computer clubs

were suddenly overshadowed by the computer corporations the second generation became the keeper

of secrets against which future generations of hackers would rebel.71

The actions of the Hardware hackers effectively created the third generation of hacker, the

suburban war-dialer, in two very ironic ways. First and most obviously, they created the PCs that the




71Markoff, John. What the Dormouse Said, 254-287

Figure 1 The MITS Altair computer

kit; the computer that realizedmany of the hardware hackers

hopes and the computer that

Microsoft would get its start

writing software for.


20/42

Obermeyer, 19

next generation of hackers would learn to use not in universities, but in their homes and schools.

Secondly, by creating corporations and consequently walls around the knowledge with which they had

built computers the hardware hackers had violated a tenet of the hacker ethic much to the chagrin of

the young suburbanites whose exploits would capture the imagination of the media.

Writing on the new-school hackers of the 1980s and 1990s Douglas Thomas writes, Born in

the world that the 1960s hackers shaped, this new generation has been jaded precisely by the failure of

the old-school hackers to make good on their promises.72 Eric S. Raymond, a programmer who follows

the old-school way of hacking quickly sums up the difference between the old-school hackers and

the new-school hackers, who he calls crackers in his book The Cathedral and the Bazaar: The basic

difference is this: hackers build things, crackers break them.73Raymonds comments represent a

fundamental change in the interpretation of the hacker ethic between the old-school and new-

school hackers. Old-school hackers strongly believed that computers could make peoples lives better

and prioritized the creation of art and beauty with computers. The new -school hackers on the other

hand most strongly believe that information should be free and that authority should be distrusted and

decentralized. In the same chapter in which Raymond highlights the relationship between old-school

and new-school hackers he writes that, If you want to be a cracker, go read the alt.2600 newsgroup

[an early Internet forum] and get ready to do five to ten in the slammer after finding out you arent as

smart as you think you are.74 2600, a quarterly hacker magazine that has been published since 1984

has an extensive compilation of its articles over the years with commentary by its famous editor

Emmanuel Goldstein (Goldstein is such an institution of new-school hacker culture that his name was

used for a character in the film Hackers, a movie which he provided technical assistance for).75 In it is a


73Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, 196

74Ibid, 197

75Goldstein, Emmanuel. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, (Wiley Publishing). 2008, ix


21/42

Obermeyer, 20

section titled The Hacker Philosophy.76 Goldstein reflects on the philosophy over the course of the

magazines life, one which echoes the hacker ethic created by the M.I.T. hackers, the same tradition that

Raymond speaks from; We talked about freedom: freedom to explore, to be an individual, to spread

information through whatever means were available.77

It was breaking things that finally got the attention of the media. 78 The suburban war-dialers,

whose image was popularized by the film War Games, characterized the hackers of the 1980s with their

unauthorized access to machines across telephone networks.79 They discovered these machines by a

method known as war-dialing whereby they automated the

dialing of telephone numbers with their computer until it found a

number that communicated back, indicating another, possibly

open, computer system. 80 The suburban war-dialers also became

known for their arrests and/or convictions that were widely

covered in the newspapers. The judicial systems failure to

understand hacking has meant that hackers have been convicted

under many different laws which complicated the search for

evidence showing the increase of convictions of hackers. The

hackers of the 1990s characterized hacking in much the same vein

as their war-dialing predecessors, except now the medium was the Internet. They had organized into

online collectives, the most famous of which include the 414s, The Cult of the Dead Cow, The Masters of

Goldstein, Emmanuel. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, (Wiley Publishing). 2008, 23476

Goldstein, Emmanuel. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, (Wiley Publishing). 2008, 20777

Ibid.78

Raymond, Eric S. The Cathedral & the Bazaar, 19679

Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture, 2380

Goldstein, Emmanuel. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey,401

3 A page from a sales brochure for the

Apple II, a computer that was popular

with the game hackers of the early 80s

and also likely used by the suburban

hackers. Levy, 303


22/42

Obermeyer, 21

Deception, and The Legion of Doom.81Despite the fundamental difference between the old-school

hackers of the 1960s and 1970s and the new-school hackers of the 1980s and 1990s, the tradition of

the hacker ethic has continued into these new generations. However it has been continually

reinterpreted according to the changes in the availability in technology as well as the changes in the

computer industry. Thomas writes:

That ethic has been transformed, undoubtedly, but so have the conditions under which that

ethic operates. These conditions are, in many ways, the progeny of the 1960s as well

Where computers were a novelty in the 1960s, today they are a desktop necessity. As

computers entered the popular imagination, the hacker came along and was transformed

with them.82

Thomas notes another difference between the old-school and new-school hackers. Where

the stories and accomplishments of the M.I.T. hackers and the hardware hackers occurred without the

attention of most of the media besides trade publications (publications which were often started by

people who shared the same goal of popularizing the personal computer as the hackers did) the exploits

of the hackers of the 1980s and the 1990s would be reported, prolifically and sometimes exaggerated

on, by the press.83 The new-school hackers did not fail to notice this media attention. As Thomas

writes, A primary difference between the hackers of the 1960s and those of today rests with the fact

that the latter are, for want of a better term, media ready.84

81Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture, 60-90

Goldstein, Emmanuel. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, 22, 294-296, 525, 55982


Freiberger, Paul & Swaine, Michael. Fire in the Valley, 213-22484



23/42

Obermeyer, 22

The rise of the hackers at M.I.T. out of a rejection of corporate culture, like that of IBM, the

Hardware hackers attempts to popularize the personal computer, and the subsequent rejection of the

commercialization of computers by the Suburban War Dialers are just three small pieces to a very

complex history. Even a basic history such as the one presented here has failed to be recognized by the

news media, film, or literature. A reason for this may be the little work that has been done in this field.

While there are many primary and secondary accounts of the events of hacker history there has

seemingly been no attempts by historians to link those events to the underlying historical context of

America. This makes presenting a history that does this even more difficult because it then requires each

event to be traced through historical cause and effect. Presenting a history of hackers that is thoroughly

linked to American history is a project in and of itself. That historians have never presented a history of

hackers couched in the history of America has likely contributed to the failure of the news, films, and

literature to acknowledge that history. Regardless, the public remains ignorant of even a basic history of

hackers and the ways in which the members of that counter-culture have influenced the technology in

our lives.

Hackers in the News

With the advantage of historical hindsight its not hard to understand the importance that

ARPA, the M.I.T. hackers, and the hardware hackers have played in shaping our world. Computers are

everywhere now, in large part thanks to them. But thinking from the point of a contemporary of the

1960s and 1970s and from the point of view of a journalist, its easier to understand why there was no

coverage of the original hackers. The M.I.T. hackers especially were such a rare breed in their time and

who did arcane things (like make video games and program robot arms) that they could hardly warrant

the attention of a national newspaper.85Even the populist, less sequestered hardware hackers of



24/42

Obermeyer, 23

California who would be directly responsible for the PC Revolution would not receive national media

attention on the scale their hacker descendants would come to live with. 86 From the outside the

hardware hackers must have looked like a hobbyist strand of counterculture that, for whatever reason,

dedicated itself to building machines out of junkyard parts. That the exploits of the M.I.T. hackers and

the hardware hackers were considered un-newsworthy is only a logical historical assumption. There is

nothing in the literature to suggest that a historian, or anyone else, has verified this with journalists of

the time. There is however data that supports this hypothesis. Using a database of historical New York

Times articles it is possible to visualize the frequency of articles relating to hackers from 1950 to 2010.

The y-axis represents the number of articles with hacker in the title or abstract. These numbers have

been cleaned of false positives as best as can be expected.

From the data it appears that the exploits of the M.I.T. and Hardware hackers were considered

un-newsworthy by the mainstream press. Most interestingly, it wasnt until the original hackers had

created the idea of the personal computer and realized it that hackers and computers in general

received attention in the press, in this case specifically the New York Times. In this way the legacy of the

86Levy, Steven. Hackers

0

200

400

600

8001000

1200

1400

1600

1800

2000

1950-1960 1961-1970 1971-1980 1981-1990 1991-2000 2001-2010

Frequency of "Hacker" in the NYT


25/42

Obermeyer, 24

old-school hackers of the 1960s and 1970s influenced the context in which new-school hackers of

the 1980s were interpreted. Increasing the accessibility and availability of computers not only gave

would-be hackers access to computers outside of universities but also increased the popularity, utility,

and thus media coverage of computers.

The entrance of hackers into the news media was not however a simple matter of the popularity

of computers reaching a

critical mass. A closer

examination of the

frequency of hacker

articles in the New York

Times during the 1980s

reveals a peculiarity in

the distribution of

articles across the

decade. 87 The years 1980, 1981, and 1982 all contain a significantly lower occurrence of articles

containing the term hacker. What would cause such a drastic change in the news media? Why would

the New York Times suddenly decide that hackers were newsworthy? It was the representation of new-

school hackers in the 1983 film War Games. Douglas Thomas writes in Hacker Culture:

With the release ofWar Games, hacker culture had a national audienceWhile there certainly

had been a long history of hacking and phreaking [essentially phreaking is to phones as hacking

is to computers] that predated War Games, the hacking community itself was small, exclusive,

87Proquest. New York Times.

http://search.proquest.com/newsstand/publication/11561/citation/12F4F829CDD434C63FB/59?accountid=14070

(Accessed March 4, 2011)

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989

Frequency of "Hacker" in NYT Articles for

1980-1989
http://search.proquest.com/newsstand/publication/11561/citation/12F4F829CDD434C63FB/59?accountid=14070http://search.proquest.com/newsstand/publication/11561/citation/12F4F829CDD434C63FB/59?accountid=14070http://search.proquest.com/newsstand/publication/11561/citation/12F4F829CDD434C63FB/59?accountid=14070


26/42

Obermeyer, 25

and rather inconspicuous. With War Games that all changed.88

War Games, a film that can easily be categorized as a technological thriller, not only affected

the news media in that it drew attention towards hackers but also in the way that the media

represented them. The film had tapped into the American tradition of simultaneously fearing and being

fascinated with technology. So too would news coverage. A number of articles tried to directly play off

the emotions that War Games brought up. In a 1983 Philadelphia Inquirerarticle titled A Hacker

Accused of Tampering a young college student hacks into the computer controlling the electronic signs

that advertises sports events on his campus.89He leaves a warning on the computer; You thought War

Games was a movie, but it is a realityThere is no way to catch us.90

Another article from the New York

Times,titled War Games Cited In Computer Bank Intrusion tells the tale of two 19-year old hackers

who bonded over their common fascination with the film War Games.91 Communicating with computers

the two teens decided to break into Defense Department computers. Using one computer they would

leapfrog from one system to the next until another computer science student at their university

noticed the intrusions.92The article then describes the District Attorneys assertion that the break in was

no childish prank.93 The tone of these two articles would be echoed from the 1980s onward and

would cement the newspaper traditional representation of hackers as criminals and trespassers.

In 1999 the coverage of a particular hacker, Kevin Mitnick, brought the issue to a head.94 John

Markoff, a New York Times reporter and author ofCyberpunkand What the Dormouse Said, both of

which are used in this study, was accused by hackers of hyping his coverage of Mitnick in order to

88 Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture, 2689"A 'HACKER' ACCUSED OF TAMPERING." PhiladelphiaInquirer, September 28, 1983, http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).90

Ibid.91UPI. "'WAR GAMES' FILM CITED IN COMPUTER BANK INTRUSION." New York Times, November 6, 1983, LateEdition (east Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).92

Ibid.93

Ibid.94



27/42

Obermeyer, 26

promote his book Takedown, which he co-authored with one the security researchers who helped catch

Mitnick when he was on the run from the FBI.95 On the 13th of September the hackers hacked the New

York Times website and left a message asking Markoff if he lost sleep at night for his lies and deceit.96

Douglas Thomas summarizes the hacker sentiment;

The popular sentiment among hackers is that the coverage of the Mitnick case hyped his arrest

and capture, referring to him as the Internets Most Wanted, as a cyberthief, and in some

cases as a terrorist, but paid little or no attention to issues of Mitnicks pretrial incarceration, to

the denial of his right to a bail hearing, or to the fact that the government had failed to

provide Mitnick with access to the evidence to be presented against him.97

The representation of hackers in the news media can be summarized similarly. The titles of

articles like "Computer Vandals Disrupted F.B.I. Site", "Famed Computer Intruder Gets Prison Term", and

"A Super Hacker Enters A Plea Bargain, in Person" are a tall tale sign of the focus of news articles on

merely the actions of the hackers and of the legal system against them with very little attention paid to

the motivations, specifics, or the context behind the hack and hacker.98 This is not unlike the semi-

histories of hacking like, Cyberpunk, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, What the Dormouse

Said, or Where the Wizards Stay Up Late, all of which only narrate the history of hackers without

analyzing or interpreting it. Clearly the tradition of shallow reporting displayed by the thin

95 Ibid.96

Ibid, 23097

Thomas, Douglas. Hacker Culture,, 23198Lewis, Peter H. "A Super Hacker Enters A Plea Bargain, in Person." New York Times, April 28, 1996, Late Edition(east Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).

Andrew Pollack. "Famed Computer Intruder Gets Prison Term." New York Times, March 27, 1999, Late Edition

(east Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011)

"Computer Vandals Disrupted F.B.I. Site." New York Times, February 26, 2000, Late Edition (east

Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).


28/42

Obermeyer, 27

representations of hackers in the news media followed the authors (many of whom are journalists for

daily publications) to their longer projects.

Without significant research into what exactly the public perception of hackers has been,

independent of the tone of fear that newspapers emote, it is not possible to come to a clear conclusion

about the way the news media coverage of hackers has affected the publics perception. With

newspaper circulations fluctuating between 58 and 45 million total issues the task of analyzing the

publications effect on the perception of hackers is further complicated.99 Despite these difficulties

patterns and possibilities can still be seen. A logical hypothesis would be that the shallow reporting on

hackers by newspapers, specifically the New York Times, facilitated by their daily publication, have led

the majority of the public to believe that hackers, by definition, are malicious criminals whose only

purpose is to affect harm via the technology in our life. Many new-school hackers believe this to be

the case. Emmanuel Goldstein writes in The Best of 2600,

To us [hackers], its very simple to see the hypocrisy and the exaggeration but its not so

readily apparent to people who depend upon the mass media as their sole source of news.

People want clearly defined villains and overly simplistic and satisfying solutions. Or, at least

thats what those in charge of statistics seem to think. Maybe its time to start giving people a

little more credit and offering some alternative scenarios.100

After the turn of the century into the 2000s the representations of hackers in the New York

Times began to diversify reflecting the apparent fragmentation of hacker culture. While feeble

99Newspaper Association of America. Trends and Numbers: Total Paid Circulation.http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspx(Accessed April 26, 2011)

100Goldstein, Eric. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, 258


29/42

Obermeyer, 28

reporting on the exploits of criminal hackers are still abundant in the last decade, newspapers have also

begun to report on the intellectual property pirates in "Movie Studios Seek to Stop DVD Copies", the

return to hacking as a hobby in Furby Hacker Tinkers, Then He Simplifies, and the enterprising of

hackers in Silicon Valley in Running a Hatchery for Replicant Hackers".101

The fragmentation of hacker culture reflected in these articles and the sheer fact that

newspapers have begun to represent hackers in ways not necessarily criminal also evidence that the

public perception of hackers is changing. Newspapers will undoubtedly play a large part in any shifting

of the publics perception of hackers. As long as hackers are only portrayed as digital criminals and

trespassers in the news media it is likely that that is how they will be perceived by the public.

Again it is difficult to come to concrete conclusions on the role the news media plays in shaping

public perception without further research. Yet there are some logical possibilities that, with further

research into the public perception of hackers, the influence of the media on that perception, and the

possible connections between the perception of hackers and political and cultural influences, may prove

to be true. It seems likely that despite the downturn in circulation over the last decade it is still the

newspapers with their daily publications and wide readership that hold the most potential to affect the

publics perception of hackers, larger than the potential of mediums like film and literature to affect

change in the perception of hackers.102 This could be because while film and literature representations

are often popular with the public and sometimes with hackers as well, the representations in film and

literature are delivered as entertainment and a level of fiction and embellishment are expected by

101Amy Harmon. "Movie Studios Seek to Stop DVD Copies." New York Times, July 18, 2000, Late Edition (eastCoast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).

Glenn Fleishman. "Furby Hacker Tinkers, Then He Simplifies." New York Times, December 14, 2000, Late Edition

(east Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).

Jennifer 8. Lee. "Running a Hatchery for Replicant Hackers." New York Times, February 21, 2006, Late Edition

(east Coast), http://www.proquest.com/ (accessed March 24, 2011).102Newspaper Association of America. Trends and Numbers: Total Paid Circulation.http://www.naa.org/TrendsandNumbers/Total-Paid-Circulation.aspx(Accessed April 26, 2011)


30/42

Obermeyer, 29

viewing and reading audiences. Newspapers however, are expected to be trustworthy sources of

information and their representations of hackers are taken as the truth versus the often fantastical

representations in film and literature. Newspapers because of their status as a trusted news source and

because of their daily publication versus an occasional release are still the most influential on the

publics perception of hackers.Because the newspapers, which hold the most influence over the publics

perception of hackers, have failed to acknowledge the history, culture, or the motivations behind the

actions of hackers the public perception of them has remained a largely negative one since media

coverage of them began.

Hackers in Film and Literature

In seeking a set of films and novels by which to conduct this analysis of hacker representations a

number of patterns became clear. The first is that film representations continue a tradition that pre-

dates hackers of representing technology as something that should be simultaneously feared and

appreciated. Films like Charlie Chaplins Modern Times (1936) and Colossus: The Forbin Project(1970)

both represent the potential of technology to serve humanity but quickly turn into cautionary tales of

technologys possible pitfalls. 103 In Modern Times a feeding machine, and in the case ofColossus: The

Forbin Projecta military computer, soon are out of control of their creators.104 More popular films like

2001: A Space Odyssey(1968) and Westworld(1973) echo this tradition of simultaneously presenting

the potentials and dangers of technology.105

A second pattern, which may explain why films have less of an impact on public perceptions of

hackers, is the embedding of hackers into previously established genres of film. Damian Gordon in his

103Modern Times. Directed by Charles Chaplin. 1936

Colossus: The Forbin Project. Directed by Joseph Sargent. 1970104

Ibid.105

2001: A Space Odyssey. Directed by Stanley Kubrick. 1968

Westworld. Directed by Michael Crichton. 1973


31/42

Obermeyer, 30

paper, Forty Years of Movie Hacking: Considering the Potential Implications of the Popular Media

Representation of Computer Hackers from 1968 to 2008, shows how hacker films can easily be

categorized into genres like heist films, heroic films (films where the protagonist is required to do

extraordinary feats, Gordons example is 1988s Die Hard), science fiction films, and true life films (films

that are portrayed as having truthful, realistic narratives, examples being 1999s Pirates of Silicon Valley

or as a modern example The Social Network(2010)).106

The science fiction literature representations of technology before and after the existence of

hackers present a similar yet unique pattern where the representations of hackers are couched in the

science fiction traditions of the 1960s but in contrast to film representations grow increasingly darker

and more dystopian. This may explain the effects of literature on the publics perception of hackers.

Douglas Thomas, writing in his book Hacker Culture posits that authors like Isaac Asimov, Philip K. Dick,

Normand Spinrad, and Harlan Ellison wrote literature that was lighter in tone than the science fiction

that the hackers of the 1990s would enjoy. These authors, writes Thomas, depicted a future of

possibility, coupled with cautionary tales.107

In comparison, the mainstay of the 1990s hacker was literature of cyberpunk, represented by

William Gibson and Jon Brunner. Their novels predominantly dystopic, describing a battle that

has already been fought and lost.The literature of cyberpunk so dominated the imagination of

the 1990s hackers that, in many ways, they game to see themselves as antiheroes, based on

106Die Hard. Directed by John McTiernan. 1988

Pirates of Silicon Valley. Directed by Martyn Burke. 1999.

The Social Network. Directed by David Fincher. 2010107



32/42

Obermeyer, 31

the prototype of Gibsons characters and others.108

Thomas comparison of science fiction during the 1960s and the 1990s illustrates two patterns.

The first is the increasingly cautionary tone that science-fiction emoted. Representations of technology

and later hackers would move from the positive settings of Philip K. Dicks novel Uberand Isaac Asimovs

I, Robotto the dystopian metropolis of Neal Stephensons Snow Crashand William Gibsons

Neuromancer. Like the tradition of technologically paranoid films that pre-dated hackers, hacker

representations in science fiction literature would be embedded in that tradition. The second pattern is

the increasing removal of science fiction from a contemporary setting. The sci-fi literature enjoyed by

the original M.I.T. and hardware hackers of the 1960s and 1970s was placed in a setting that Thomas

describes as recognizable.109 The settings of the cyberpunk literature in the 1990s however were

distinguished by settings like that of William Gibsons Neuromancer.110Known as BAMA or the

Boston- Atlanta Metropolitan Axis the sense of place and setting in Gibsons novel is changed from a

geographical sense of place to one that is reliant upon information.111 This second pattern may be

indicative of the reasons why, despite science-fiction literature, specifically cyberpunk literature, that

depicts hackers has seemingly not had a large impact on the public perception of them, though as

Thomas notes, it has had a significant effect on hackers. Without publisher sales figures to confirm,

another possibility is that science fiction literature has less of an effect on public perception because the

populace is slowly exposed over time whereas films, if popular, are viewed by millions in a matter of the

few weeks that they are in theatres.

When hackers entered the popular imagination through films like War Games and Tron it was in

the traditions of previous representations of technology that the representations of hackers were


109Ibid

110Gibson, William. Neuromancer

111Gibson, William. Neuromancer, 43


33/42

Obermeyer, 32

couched.112 Film representations of hackers have been extremely numerous over the years; more and

more films that depict hackers are seemingly released every year. Films like Tron, War Games, and

Hackers have a hidden layer of references to hacker cultural and history. Tron (1982) released in 1982, is

the first film to ever use the verb hacking.113 The plot driven by the philosophical debate of whether

computers are for doing business or for the benefit of the users echoes the story of the M.I.T. hackers.

War Games (1983) displays not only realistic portrayals of hacking for the early 1980s, but also portrays

phone phreaking, the preceding telephone equivalent of hacking. 114Hackers while staying mostly in-

step with hacker ideology also references the editor of the hacking magazine 2600 (and the author of

the 2600 compilation used for this study) Emmanuel Goldstein.115 For all of the films that make subtle

references to hacker culture and history there are many more that do not.

Most films that feature hackers fall into the genres mentioned before: heist, heroic, science

fiction, true life, or (an addition from the genres that Gordon identifies) techno-thriller. Films can often

fit into multiple genres and in the case of the techno-thriller this is especially true. Defined loosely for

the purposes of this study a techno-thriller is any film where the plot is forwarded either by the

malfunction of technology or the malicious use of technology. Terminatorwith its time travel and

human like cyborg assassins is a perfect example of a techno-thriller where technology is used

maliciously.116 As mentioned previously, when hackers entered the public imagination in War Games it

was very much in this tradition that they did so. Hackers were assimilated into the American tradition of

simultaneously fearing and being fascinated by technology. Techno-thrillers, with or without hacker

characters, have continued to be commercially successful since hackers entered the public imagination

in 1983. In fact, as computers, and thus hackers, have become a more ubiquitous part of our lives

112WarGames. Directed by John Badham. 1983

Tron. Directed by Steven Lisberger. 1982113

IMDB. Tronhttp://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/(Accessed April 3, 2011)114

WarGames. Directed by John Badham. 1983115

Goldstein, Emmanuel. The Best of 2600: A Hacker Odyssey, 234116

The Terminator. Directed by James Cameron. 1984
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0084827/


34/42

Obermeyer, 33

techno-thrillers may have become even more successful. In 1973 a film called WestWorldwas released.

Its plot centered around two friends on vacation at the worlds most expensive resort Delos, where

vacationers can live a week or more of their lives in perfect recreations of the American west, Rome, or

Medieval Europe, made possible by the resorts revolutionary cyborg robots.117 All goes wrong when the

robots begin to malfunction and murder the guests. It grossed $3,000,000 domestically.118 If the

technology run-amok in a high end amusement park plot seems familiar then it should come as no

surprise that Michel Crichton, writer ofJurassic Park, is not only also the writer ofWestworldbut its

director as well. 119 Jurassic Park, which features dinosaurs killing tourists instead of robots and an

antagonistic hacker character, was released in 1993 and grossed $ 357,067,947 domestically.120 It is to

date, the most successful film with a hacker in it ever.

Hacker films have varied in their representations of hackers from light, in movies like, War

Games (1983), Ferris Buellers Day Off(1986), and Sneakers(1992) to darker in films likeJohnny

Mnemonic (1995), The Net(1995), and Enemies of the State (1998).121Yet while films with hackers have

varied in their representations of them, these films have not done so in a way that seems to be linked to

the political or cultural history of America in the last half of the 20th century. It seems that technology is

topical enough for Hollywood that the insertion of politics or the culture at large would only complicate

the plot. Some films however, are more influenced by the historical context of their release than others.

For example, War Games, with its threats of WWIII with Soviet Russia is clearly a film that is painted by

the heightened paranoia of the increasingly warm Cold War in the 1980s. In the first years of the 21 st

century hacker representations have been frequently terroristic in nature. The best example of this is

117Westworld. Directed by Michael Crichton. 1973

118The Numbers. Westworldhttp://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1973/0WEWO.php(Accessed March 15,

2011)119

Jurassic Park. Directed by Steven Spielberg. 1993

Westworld. Directed by Michael Crichton. 1973120

The Numbers. Jurassic Park. http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1993/0JRSS.php (Accessed March 18,

2011)121

Gordon, Damian. Forty Years of Movie Hacking, 68-74
http://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1973/0WEWO.phphttp://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1973/0WEWO.phphttp://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1973/0WEWO.phphttp://www.the-numbers.com/movies/1973/0WEWO.php


35/42

Obermeyer, 34

Live Free or Die Hardin which Bruce Willis reprises his role a stubborn cop, who has to save Washington

DC and the nation from a scorned Department of Defense contractor gone rogue hacker. It is not the

amount by which films have been characterized by their place in time that affects the publics

perception of hackers it is the films ability to show the motivations or history of the hackers themselves.

A great deal of research, likely in the form of a more focused study on the film representations of

hackers alone may reveal stronger patterns between hacker representations over time.

From the films surveyed for this study it appears that films have generally portrayed hackers in a

better light than that of representations of hackers in news media. Yet for all the numerous films that

have hackers in them, a logical hypothesis, (again because there is little research on what exactly the

public perception of hackers is and has been) is that because the hacker representations in film our

encapsulated within genres of film with which the American public is familiar that film representations

of hackers have done little to shape the public perception of hackers. The overall failure of films to

address or at least acknowledge the complex and rich culture and history of hackers is another piece of

the reason that the public has remained largely ignorant of the existence of that culture and history.

Conclusion

There is a lot to be learned from a study of this nature, most importantly that there are many

directions and a great relevance and need for further research.

Documents

Console Cowboys: The Complex Evolution of Representations of Hackers in Media