{"id":2017,"date":"2021-02-16T16:02:43","date_gmt":"2021-02-16T22:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thiemeworks.com\/?p=2017"},"modified":"2021-05-17T14:45:20","modified_gmt":"2021-05-17T19:45:20","slug":"zen-and-the-art-of-hacking","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thiemeworks.com\/words\/on-the-edges\/zen-and-the-art-of-hacking\/","title":{"rendered":"Zen and the Art of Hacking"},"content":{"rendered":"
“Zen and the Art of Hacking” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n by<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Richard Thieme <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n published in Internet Underground, April 1997<\/em><\/p>\n Don’t call them hackers, call them <\/span><\/span><\/span>homo sapiens hackii — <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span>human beings who are “back-engineered” by their symbiotic relationship with computer networks to frame reality in ways shaped by that interaction. They’re not a new species, but they are a new variety, and just like the <\/span><\/span><\/span>Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span>they’re everywhere. But how can you tell the real thing? <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Looks, jargon, and hard-guy handles are too easy to imitate. Besides, real hackers blend in well with their surroundings — that’s the point of social engineering, after all — and hide in large corporations, high-tech start-ups and IT departments, and intelligence, security, and law enforcement. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Some don’t even use computers very much.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “I couldn’t hack my way out of a wet paper bag,” confesses William Knowles who hangs out on a hacker listserv. “But information hacking, social engineering, dumpster diving, yes — and I’m a terror on the telephone. I am the gatekeeper’s worst nightmare!”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “It comes down to a common quest for knowledge,” William says. “Why does it do what it does? Who, what, where, when, why, how?”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Hackers are distinguished by a hunger for knowledge, for seeing things whole, for knowing how things work. Their power derives from the critical knowledge that leverages other knowledge, their enthusiasm from an adrenaline rush that comes when they finally make that connection, solve that puzzle. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n When the door against which you’ve been banging your head suddenly dissolves and you slip effortlessly to the next level –that’s the joy of hacking. But the game isn’t Doom or Quake, the game is life, and the playing field is the infinity of the wired world which your mind explores in the night like a stealth fighter. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Some hackers have been wired since early childhood; they see the world in the image of networks. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [“I started using computers when I was 8 on the local public library’s Apple IIe’s. I can’t remember not being able to program in AppleSoft. I still recall these strange POKE locations …” — Attitude Adjuster.]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [“One day I realized that I think like a computer, complete with IF, THEN and GOTO statements. I react to a situation by finding the most logical situation, then acting on it.” — Jaymz Tide] <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n When you learned as a child how to creep unnoticed into root under cover of darkness, or hide in a sniffer that’s a surrogate self so you can steal the secrets of the rich and powerful or observe the hidden life of corporations and governments, learn how it really is behind the fictions by which men live, then steal away at dawn leaving not so much as a single track in the melting snows of cyberspace — then you know what hacking means. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Hackers are men and women who go where they must go to learn what they must learn. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Often portrayed as rebellious heretics, hackers are in fact faithful followers of three gods: <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n — Odin, who hung cold and alone in a windswept tree for nine long days and nights, sleepless and single-hearted, in order to seize the knowledge of the Runes. The Runes, symbols of what the Greeks called <\/span><\/span><\/span>logos,<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span> the creative power of the Word, the magic of consciousness acting on inanimate matter and making it plastic. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n — the trickster Coyote, who some call Pan, his wry humor a grin in the shadows, his appetites and passions a firestorm of Dionysian ardor. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n — Jesus the man, the earthy Jew, a real mensch rather than a dreamy-eyed Nordic nanny-of-the-planet, who refused to knuckle under to convention or the suffocating constraints of the lowest common denominator of the crowd.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Lighten Up<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Hackers have a sense of humor. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Dr. Bergan Evans, an English professor at Northwestern, spoke with a chuckle in the early sixties of a social worker’s excessive worry about “juvenile delinquents” stealing cars. He remembered how he and his boyhood chums stole away in the night to loose the horses from a neighbor’s corral.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “It wasn’t called delinquency in my day,” he said. “It was called, ‘boys will be boys.'”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n We discover in the process of living life with gusto the boundaries we had better not cross, then learn how to set limits from within. The risks must be real or the rewards aren’t real. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “The callbacks started to terrify me,” admits Attitude Adjuster of his early days of phreaking.”I have a healthy fear of being busted. Thankfully I didn’t get busted, and I came out the better for it.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So let’s lighten up. Hackers are not just whacked-out loners in darkened bedrooms, cackling like Beevis and Butthead as they break into your bank account. Hackers at their best are trekkers who hike the peaks and valleys of the virtual world. The infrastructure of the world is a puzzle invented to test their mettle. They fail into failure again and again before failing into success: the non-pattern of chaotic data suddenly coalesces, the dots connect, and anxiety vanishes. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n You see how it works! Bingo! You understand how it all hangs together.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n This is not the malevolent caricature invented by the media to feed the fearful projections of those who don’t know. This is humanity at its best. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n So if my description evokes judgement, a desire to chastise these high spirits like a stern schoolmaster, beat down that restless intelligence and … control them, get them back into the box; then quit reading right now and turn the page. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n But if you know what I’m talking about — if you have ever bent your back too long under a low ceiling defined by the rigidly righteous and finally had to stand up, your head crashing through plaster into thin air — then read on. This is a partial glimpse through the eyes of some of the best and the brightest of the promise and possibilities of the wired world. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Living by a Vision<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Technically, it’s called “living proleptically” — when a new possibility breaks into the present with such compelling power that we have no choice but to live out of that vision as if it’s real. We adopt a new point of reference, and by living as if it has already happened, we make it real. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Hang out with hackers and you’ll find yourself moving toward their way of framing reality. That’s how we know that the <\/span><\/span><\/span>tao — <\/em><\/span><\/span><\/span>the way things are flowing — is moving in that direction. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Example: a teacher I know was supposed to teach her fourth graders how to use computers but didn’t know how. She made a secret pact with her three brightest students to meet with her after school to teach her computing so she could teach the other students computing.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Of course many hackers are bored with school! They haven’t the patience to wait while the teachers catch up. They don’t want information delivered at the plodding pace of a curriculum through a command-and-control structure, they want to get out there on the wires and get it themselves.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “The administrator that I work for at school,” says Attitude Adjuster, “lets me hack the system all I want. He doesn’t interfere because he doesn’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes he asks me, what should I do next? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I want to say, You mean you haven’t figured that out yet from the logical progression of things? I used to try to tell him what to do next and he would ask, why? I stopped answering because any answer I gave him, he couldn’t understand. He could never see the Big Picture so the details never connected in a way that made sense.” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n [It’s not just teachers that younger hackers can’t hack. It’s authority figures in government as well. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n A US Senator’s aide described one of the first interactive hearings in Congress. They arranged a network of Powerbooks connected to the Internet. The senator, a man of considerable power, came in after everything was set up and they said, “Senator, begin your chat.” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n He looked at the powerbook and said, “Hello? Hello?” When nothing happened, he asked the aide, “What do I do, talk to it?”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n These are the people writing legislation about the Internet, telecommunications, the ground-rules for the wired world. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The aide adds that two thirds of those in congress don’t use e-mail.]<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Living as if the new world is already here. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n For some, that vision begins with a blinding light; for others it just happens to happen.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “My first computer was a Commodore 64,” says DIALTONE_, who works for a hightech Canadian company. “I started with games, but they bored me, so I started looking into the works of the computer. It fascinated the hell out of me!.” After getting his first modem and being turned on to hacking by the sysop of a BBS, he hacked into his first computer.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “As I was exploring. I had this feeling of … it was a feeling you can’t explain, anxiety to get a hold and see everything I could. Sure I was scared at first but that disappeared as I discovered what was in this machine.” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Modify, a co-founder of Listed Black Communications, remembers it similarly.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “My first real hack was into the system of a nuclear engineering company. I took the unshadowed password file, then went back to take a look at the system itself … wow, was it great! You’re torn between two emotions: one is, what if I screw up and leave my muddy footprints all over the computer? The other is, what does this thing do? What information does it hold? You are “god” over that machine.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n For Attitude Adjuster, the interest developed more gradually through conversations with kindred spirits.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “More than anything else it was something I talked about with other kids who used public computers in the library. We’d sit around and speculate about other systems, huddle around the single UNIX reference the library owned.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The Machinery is Always On <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Hackers are need-to-know machines, obsessively searching for a way to scratch that itch and gain momentary peace before it flares up again. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n The popular perception of hackers as malicious warez kiddies downloading someone else’s code draws contempt from hackers who earn their knowledge with sleepless nights and relentless exploration. <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Use someone else’s scripts to do something malicious or damage someone’s system?<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “That’s not hacking,” says Yobie Benjamin, a respected strategic technologies consultant. Benjamin has worked with Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Boeing, Hewlett Packard and many others on prototyping, project development, and design. He knows that many respectable names in high-tech commerce earned their stripes as hackers.<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n “Sure, we all did some of that when we were kids, first starting out. Maybe that’s all you know how to do when you begin. But what moves me is, what’s out there? Hacking for me is more than a quest, it’s THE quest — the quest for knowledge.” <\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n Listen to Modify: “When I went on to learn advanced programming languages, I would sit in a bookstore until closing time and just read up on all types of stuff — circuits, DNS, TCP\/IP, firewalls, UNIX, Java — I have tons of books all over the house and that’s pretty much how I got into hacking, feeding my head with knowledge from books and classes in schools.”<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n