Phreaking, Hacking, Cracking, and Systems of Communication
This class will cover hacking and the hacker figure as presented in fiction, general media, and computing media in its many permutations (hacker, cracker, phreaker). As such, the class will examine the hacker as a figure for destruction (cracker or script-kiddie), as a revolutionary (Linus Torvalds, Cathedral and the Bazaar, Hackers & Painters, the films Hackers and The Matrix), as a cowboy (Gibson's Neuromancer, Slotkin's Gunfighter Nation: The Myth of the Frontier in 20th-Century America, Rez, text-based Doom, and System Shock 2), and as a magician/shaman (Shadowrun, ice and fire as tropes in hacking, Alice as hacking her own mind, hacker figuring in the place of magician/catalyst in these narrative systems). In particular, we will investigate the hacker as a method into investigating technological networks, their impact on communications, their cultural impact--technological forms including the phone, the telegraph, and the computer--and in relation to the war machine.
By configuring the hacker as it appears in these different forms, we will investigate notions of genre, media representation, and the construction of catalyst characters who embody change. Using the hacker figure, the class will study intersections of science and fantasy, and how science is portrayed in realistic fiction and factual media. This class will undertake a broad reading selection, including many popular forms like films, magazines, and video games; as well as business white papers on hacking, and news articles and forums on Open Source; and science-fiction and fantasy short stories, novels, and poems.
Texts
A subscription to Wired (or 2600) for the months the class meets
Regular readership of one open source forum
Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon
for phreakers: The Telephone Book : technology--schizophrenia--electric speech Avital Ronell.