'Hackers' at 20
There's three really great hacking movies: WarGames, Hackers and Sneakers.WarGames really nails the solo bedroom hacker of the 80s but then mixes in the DoD and general purpose AI to turn it into a coldwar thriller.Sneakers is a clever, quirky, thoughtful adult hacking film.Hackers though, teenage me ate up the feeling of the hacking culture that it espoused. When I read cyperpunk books, I pictured the environment and characters as places and people who could have come from this world. The sort of irreverent, authority denouncing, cybervandalism spoke to me. The Warez, Demoscen, ANSI art scenes all seemed to sort of be a kind of foundation that created a universe that this movie made manifest.When this movie came out, I was still telneting, BBSing and gophering around "cyberspace". As soon as I found a writeable folder on an ftp server I'd make hidden folders and upload crap and tell all my friends. We'd stay up late wardialing and playing this soundtrack. We'd telnet to random IP addresses and then get excited when we'd hit a VAX system, just like in the movie.It formed a kind of social scaffolding my nerd friends and I hung our digital world off of.It's kind of laughable in many ways now, like many teen counter culture movement. But it still holds a special place in my heart.