Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
ways of liberating other humans. Morpheus is convinced that Neo is
'the one', who has special powers to defeat the machines. Morpheus,
Trinity and the others on the ship can enter the computer simula-
tion and interact with the world in special ways, though they have
to be careful to avoid the attentions of certain men in black who
also have special powers, and who are, in fact, a kind of machinic
secret police force.
hacking culture
Cyberpunk, Techno and deconstructionist graphic design repre-
sented consonant reactions across different genres to the emergent
technoculture. Cyberpunk's juxtaposed ideolects, Techno's use of
repetition and sampling and eschewal of the artist's presence, decon-
structionist graphic design's use of layers and experimentation with
typography, all reflected a world of diffused and distributed com-
munication mediated through networks of powerful information
technology. It is in the same context that the figure of the hacker
emerged and was defined in its modern sense. Though, as we have
seen, hacking already existed both as a name and a concept, it
referred largely to the obsessive interest in the possibilities of com-
puting evinced by Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence
students at places like MIT and Stanford. It was not until the
s
that hacking as a criminal /outlaw activity became widespread.
Much to the disgust of the original hackers, the name became used
to describe those who used computer networks to gain access to
other people's computers. In
1980
the FBI arrested a group of hackers
in Milwaukee calling themselves the
1982
414
s (after the local area code),
after members were accused of
computer break-ins perpe-
trated against institutions such as Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer
Center and the Los Alamos National Laboratory. At the same time
the Comprehensive Crime Control Act gave the Secret Service legal
jurisdiction over credit card and computer fraud. Hacker groups
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