Dear Hacker: Letters to the Editor of 2600

Chapter 4. Technology

Seeing how technology has changed over the years has been one of the more fascinating and sometimes frightening side effects of putting out a hacker magazine. The frightening part is partially the incredible speed with which everything has been transformed. The computers we were working with only a few years ago are by today's standards absurdly slow and outdated. Now imagine what machines were like a quarter of a century ago!

The other frightening aspect is how our attitudes have changed concerning things like privacy, surveillance, and "security." That last one is in quotes because the increased security we're faced with every day in buildings and airports and schools is really nothing more than the illusion of security. We've come to accept being spied upon constantly and we even willingly give out information that we would have clung to defensively in years past. Still, much of the hacker world remains healthily skeptical of these trends and I think if there's to be any sort of salvation from this pit, this is the community to turn to.

While the ingredients and the surroundings have changed, I believe the hacker spirit is still pretty much as it was when we first started to publish in 1984. In those early days, there was so much more attention paid to phone phreaking because it was our backbone. There was no Internet, no Skype, no easy way to communicate with people who weren't already within shouting distance. And that's really what was driving us back then: ...