Give Hackers Honorable Mention : Most Computer Hobbyists Are Content to Tinker

Among computer hackers, Robert Morris’ name will be legendary, for a while. What he did to gain celebrity--bringing down the national network that links all government-sponsored university research efforts--was certainly annoying and possibly criminal, but it was not what hacking is really about. Just as accountants can use their skills to embezzle funds, so computer hackers can use theirs for all sorts of crimes, from espionage to loitering. Most hackers, like most accountants, never get in the news.

In the early 1980s you could depend on seeing a half-dozen articles a month titled “Why Johnny Can’t Compute,” or “Computer Literacy: Another Failure in the Schools.” The primary effect was to agitate parents. The influence of the microcomputer on the young was more varied, and much more interesting.

From the very first, a few kids found that they could outclass the teacher and gain recognition if they could hack a decent line of code. While their teachers were taking night classes in PILOT and LOGO (two credits each toward the next salary step) or listening to a Honeywell-trained systems manager talk about data integrity, the kids were learning how to program to the limits of their machines. They learned random seeding and graphic string packing. They learned how to use symbolic logic and multidimensional arrays and sorts, and they found and used all the holes that had been left in Microsoft BASIC. They traded peek and poke points like baseball cards. They became competent. They became hackers.

Most kids are lucky enough to find their competence in skills that the system recognizes and are satisfied with that. Hackers are not so fortunate. And more often than not, they also aren’t the most socially adept or academically successful kids in school. Exaggerate this mild truism and you have the stereotype of the Computer Nerd.

Stereotyping an exception to the norm is nothing new. Much the same thing happened a few generations ago, when the automobile was new. Maybe Ford made it, but only the weird kid down the block could fix it so it stayed fixed. And more likely than not, he wasn’t doing all that well in school. The handy stereotype for these kids was Grease Monkey. The schools quickly institutionalized this attitude. They set up auto shop classes where kids could get their hands dirty and earn a diploma without having to take Latin.

Not long before that, clever kids were listening for the sounds between the commercial stations on their crystal sets. They translated the Morse code beeps and clicks into words and sentences, and even learned to recognize individual “fists,” the characteristic rhythms of particular operators. Their first telegraph key was a drawer knob and two strips of copper, mounted on the back of a rat trap. Their first broadcast CQ (“can anybody hear me?”) was probably illiterate and certainly illegal, but it was heaven.

Some of these ham operators became competent enough at building radios out of scrap (and repairing them with more scrap) to get jobs as radio operators on the great ocean-going barges during the first part of the 20th Century. They were the proud masters of the only weatherproof structures built atop the huge flat decks: the original Radio Shacks.

Because their shack was the highest point on the ocean, and their whip and dipole antennas even higher, they were often the literal center of every passing lightning storm--which is why their generic tag was Sparks. The stereotype inflicted on them was the excitable red-headed kid who could understand static and warn of approaching disasters. His most recent incarnation was Cpl. Radar O’Reilly, M.A.S.H.

Very soon computers will be enough a part of the school curriculum that good programming will merely elicit good grades. This does not mean that there will be no more hackers. Just as, every day, some kid discovers the secrets of Morse code or the wonders of the internal combustion engine, another kid discovers that microcomputers, unlike teachers or parents, do not judge them or make false promises.

There will always be grease monkeys and hams and, even though their first, glorious day is almost gone, there will always be hackers.