To be fair, I was pretty damn angsty at the time :)
Always exciting to see this pop up someplace new. It's being translated into Polish for a textbook this year as well.
Always exciting to see this pop up someplace new. It's being translated into Polish for a textbook this year as well.
And he's absolutely right that it was angsty venting (I was 19, so I'll even allow adolescent). That doesn't mean that it didn't resonate with multiple generations of hackers in the 30 years since.
I also think the previous commenter makes a mistake in not recognizing the influence of teenage angst on hacker culture, like many other subcultures.
Young, mostly male, persons form groups, use nicknames, makes their own publications, rejects the (some) rules of society and try to decide who is the best is almost every subculture at the end of the last century. From punkrockers and ravers, to graffiti writers and street gangs.
I think there's value in knowing how things were and what makes a culture.
I hope it made the parent commenter feel awkward realising that the person he's insulting is metaphorically in the room.
The humilty of @loydb's comment should hopefully add futher shame.
While a wholly inaccurate portrayal of hacking or even computing, it did contribute to my fascination with both.
On the culture side, I don't know of any major films that capture computing culture. Charles Stross's Laundry series does a better job than most (You can still read The Atrocity Archives without a backround in computing, but you'll get this nagging feeling you're missing something), seeing as Stross is up to his eyeballs in computing. It's also the first piece of fiction I know of to reference Symbolics. And of course, the protagonist's name is Bob Oliver Francis Howard. Because that book just couldn't get any more in-jokey. But, you know, in a good way.
"You" and "Daemon" also capture bits of computing fairly well.
Going back to your point about being angst: if it's any consolation, that's how I felt as a teenager as well. I didn't come across your manifesto until quite some years after it was written but it definitely resonates with how I felt at the time as well.
"We write those scenes to be inaccurate and ridiculous on purpose.
I'm a young writer in his mid-30's, computer and game savvy. Lots of us are. I guess you could call it a competition of one-upping other shows to see who can get the best/worst "zoomhance" sequence on the air. Sometimes the exec producers and directors are in on it, and other times we just try to get bits and lines into scripts.
90% of our TV viewing audience will never know the difference and honestly, we love it when threads like this get started and love reading the youtube comments. "
https://www.reddit.com/r/gaming/comments/f2i7t/ive_written_f...
The comments on that thread link to a lot of ridiculous moments of IT movie/TV history.
(My google-fu is strong today.)
Face facts, you're never gonna live this one down. :) The document is emblematic of what social butterflies call the zeitgeist of an era. What was really more or less a bunch of kids messing around, they see as a revolution, akin to punk rock. "Conscience of a Hacker" seemed to validate their mythology of the 80s hacker as a cyberpunk revolutionary, so it will be preserved and repeated as part of the mythohistory of computing.
Plus it was quoted in Hackers and will be immortal on the strength of that alone.
-Remagi
No, I don't MMO any more.