Mentor's Last Words
By: The Mentor
Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager Arrested
in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested after Bank
Tampering"... Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your
three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look behind the
eyes of the hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick, what forces
shaped him, what may have molded him? I am a hacker, enter my
world....
Mine is a world that begins with school... I'm smarter than most of the
other kids, this crap they teach us bores me... Damn underachiever.
They're all alike. I'm in junior high or high school. I've listened to
teachers explain for the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I
understand it. "No, Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work. I did it in my
head..." Damn kid. Probably copied it. They're all alike. I made a
discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is cool. It does
what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because I screwed it up.
Not because it doesn't like me... Or feels threatened by me... Or thinks
I'm a smartass... Or doesn't like teaching and shouldn't be here... Damn
kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it happened...
a door opened to a world... rushing through the phone line like heroin
through an addict's veins, an electronic pulse is sent out, a refuge from
the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a board is found. "This is
it... this is where I belong...." I know everyone here... even if I've
never met them, never talked to them, may never hear from them again... I
know you all... Damn kid. Tying up the phone line again. They're all
alike... You bet your ass we're all alike... we've been spoon-fed baby
food at school when we hungered for steak... the bits of meat that you did
let slip through were pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by
sadists, or ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach
found us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the
desert.
This is our world now... the world of the electron and the switch, the
beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing without
paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by profiteering
gluttons, and you call us criminals. We explore... and you call us
criminals.
We seek after knowledge... and you call us criminals. We exist without
skin color, without nationality, without religious bias... and you call us
criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and
lie to us and try to make us believe it's for our own good, yet we're
the criminals.
Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of
judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like. My
crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will never forgive me
for. I am a hacker, and this is my manifesto. You may stop this
individual, but you can't stop us all... after all, we're all alike.