Left on the Web

Katie Hafner & John Markoff – Cyber Punk, Outlaws and hackers on the computer frontier

Being the geek that I am, when I discovered this book in a box of books that I got for free from someone who wanted to get rid of them, this book immediately caught my eye. A book, non-fiction, about such legendary hackers as Kevin Mitnick and the first massive virus/worm author Robert Morris, and a hacker that for some reason I didn't know about called Pengo, who ended up living a spy thriller. Split up in three parts, one for each hacker, this book is written in a way that it could be read by anyone from complete geeks to complete newbies to computers. Though slightly outdated (the first edition was published in 1991) the book is still very interesting. Of course, this book could be more seen as historical reference on the topic, and as such will never really be outdated. It is mainly in the references to the number of computers connected to the Internet “nowadays” and the speed of modems “nowadays” that the book may sound slightly outdated. And so Hafner and Markoff have truly delivered a historical reference on a topic which ruled the media for quite a while in it's days. All three hackers are depicted not as hackers with a malicious intent. And if we can trust these stories enough, indeed they do not seem to have had any malicious intent. And that makes all three cases even more interesting. All three, in their own way, were working mainly out of geekery, out of hobby, and/or out of curiosity. So after reading this book, it is hard to blame any of the subjects of the book on what they did. Sure, it was wrong, but their intent was OK. At least that's my feeling, but I somehow relate to them a bit. Funny enough, this book also immediately triggered me to pull out my copy of Uplink, the multi-platform hacker game where you play a hacker who works for money to copy files, destroy data, etc. etc. I can only guess that this game was inspired either by this book, or by the cases described in this book. So yes, definitely a wonderful book, very interesting. Though I suspect the easy to understand language was not necessary since the book will probably mainly attract geek-ish readers, the book is so nice and easy to read that it will appeal to a lot of people. And lastly, another effect of this book is the mentions of other books that I now want to read. The Hacker Crackdown by Bruce Sterling for instance. And The Shockwave Rider by John Brunner. I guess I'll have to start looking for copies of those.
June 17, 2006 - tags: books