A Time for Reflection (December, 1984)
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1984 will not go down in history as the year of the phone phreak or computer
hacker. Instead it will most likely be labeled something dumb like the year of
the communications revolution or the PC bonanza. That's not surprising at all;
those are precisely the things that appeared to have occurred this year. But we
know better.

The true communications revolution has been going on for quite some time. Many
years ago, the first telephone enthusiasts started using their phones to do a
little more than just call people they knew. They began to experiment. They
sent strange tones down the line, activated distant machines, and traded
information among themselves. Not only that, but they took it upon themselves
to learn all about the infrastructure of the biggest company on earth, Ma Bell.
Now almost everyone knows something about the way the giant phone company used
to work and the way the near-giants work today. All you hear now is talk of
long-distance services and how great each one is. All you see advertised
everywhere are telephones, as if they'd just been invented, which, in a way,
they have been - for the average person. Others, though, have been participating
in this "revolution" for quite some time.

A similar story holds true for computers. The field is exploding now on Madison
Avenue. But all of this talk of floppies, K, megabytes, and Control+C's is old
news to hackers (both the programming and the cracking kind). As a rule, they've
been into this kind of thing for years.

So what are we saying here? Two things, really. Looking at the past, it's
pretty clear that those  mischief-makers  weren t only interested in causing
chaos and perpetrating fraud, but also in being among the first to try their
hand at the new technology, without being hovered over and told what not to do.
Our other point lies with the future. Those phone phreaks and computer hackers
of today may still be in a position to shine the light in front of the masses.
We had at least one example of that in 1984, when hackers uncovered the wealth
of information that is stored in the TRW computers - personal information about
almost everyone that can be looked at by almost anyone. A glance at this year s
pages of 2600 reveals a disturbing number of Owellian touches in the works
- cameras surveying streets for possible crimes, vastly expanded FBI files on
innocent people, neat categorization of human beings. Technological enthusiasts
aren t the only kind of people that can find these nasty things in their
beginning stages. But these days, they can sure be one of the most important.
Happy new year.