โ Scribed by Sterling, Bruce
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The AT&T long-distance network crashes, and millions of calls go unanswered. A computer hacker reprograms a switching station, and calls to a Florida probation office are shunted to a New York phone-sex hotline. An underground computer bulletin board publishes a pilfered BellSouth document on the 911 emergency system, making it available to anyone who dials up. How did so much illicit power reach the hands of an undisciplined few - and what should be done about it? You are about to descend into a strange netherworld - one that sprang into existence when computers were first connected to telephones. This place has no physical location; it exists only in the networks that bind together its population. Like any frontier, it is home to a wide range of personalities, from legitimate computer professionals to those known only by their noms de net; denizens like Knight Lightning, Leftist, Compu-Phreak, Major Havoc, and Silver Spy; groups like the Lords of Chaos, Phantom Access Associates, Shadow Brotherhood, and the Coalition of Hi-Tech Pirates. This is not normal space, but cyberspace. And if you use a computer, cyberspace is moving inexorably closer to you with each passing day. Your guide on this journey is bestselling science fiction author and longtime computer user Bruce Sterling, who was galvanized into action following the massive hacker crackdowns of 1990, in which law enforcement officers executed search warrants across the country against lawbreakers - and suspected lawbreakers - in the computer underground. In The Hacker Crackdown, Sterling - respected by hackers, law officers, and civil libertarians alike - uses his unique reportorial access and his considerable powers as a novelist to weave a startling narrative that informs, compels, and appalls. Sterling has researched all corners of this challenging and controversial new world for this book. In it we meet outlaws and cops, bureaucrats and rebels, geniuses and grifters: all denizens of a dazzling e
Cyberpunk novelist Sterling (Involution Ocean) has produced by far the most stylish report from the computer outlaw culture since Steven Levy's Hackers. In jazzy New Journalism proE;e, sounding like Tom Wolfe reporting on a gunfight at the Cybernetic Corral, Sterling makes readers feel at home with the hackers, marshals, rebels and bureaucrats of the electronic frontier. He opens with a social history of the telephone in order to explain how the Jan. 15, 1990, crash of AT&T's long-distance switching system led to a crackdown on high-tech outlaws suspected of using their knowledge of eyberspace to invade the phone company's and other corporations' supposedly secure networks. After explaining the nature of eyberspace forms like electronic bulletin boards in detail, Sterling makes the hackers-who live in the ether between terminals under noms de nets such as VaxCat-as vivid as Wyatt Earp and Doe Holliday. His book goes a long way towards explaining the emerging digital world and its ethos. (Oct.)
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
The AT&T long-distance network crashes, and millions of calls go unanswered. A computer hacker reprograms a switching station, and calls to a Florida probation office are shunted to a New York phone-sex hotline. An underground computer bulletin board publishes a pilfered BellSouth document on the 91
In "Law and Disorder," FBI agent Nick Connolly risks blowing his cover to help Kody Cameron escape her kidnappers, and in "Secret Bodyguard," undercover cop Jesse McCall helps Amanda Crowe search for her missing baby.
After the untimely death of her harsh, overbearing husband left her a widow at the age of twenty-three, Ruth Watson vowed that she would never depend on a man again, let alone submit to one. The hard world of the frontier is no easy place for a woman to make her own way, however, and when the tough,
Pearl has fended for herself since she was orphaned at a young age, but on the night she meets Aaron Stanley her life is thrown into chaos. The handsome pioneer and his brothers are headed west to stake their claim on the frontier, and when an unfortunate turn of events leaves Pearl without
Paradise is the perfect escape for ex-Marine Nick Breakspear, captain of a charter yacht operation in the Bahamas, until he agrees to pilot a "detox cruise" for the drug-addled grown son and daughter of a powerful U.S. senator. Ambushed far from port, he is helpless to prevent the murder of a crew m
In Crackdown visual art becomes a powerful take down tool to push back against the oligarchs. People adjust to the surveillance state and its agents who are emergent forces. Post-coup Thailand is the setting as high tech competes with traditional power in a battle for hearts and minds. It is a noir