March 11, 1990

LAST WEEKEND was the first-ever “Social Impacts of Technology” panel at the West Coast Computer Faire. Though it was sparsely attended, the fact that it occurred at all is testimony to what appears to be a growing concern about the direct effects of technology on our lives and liberties.

Note, for example, the unusually sensational cover tag on the March-April 1990 issue of The Utne Reader: “Is Technology Out of Control?” Or the Day-Glo green cover teaser on the March 1990 issue of Harper’s magazine, which screamed, “Computer Hackers: Criminals?”

Utne Reader’s cover tag labeled a series of pieces on today’s so-called neo-Luddite movement. The original Luddites were skilled laborers in early 19th-century Britain who responded to the industrial revolution by smashing the factory machines that robbed them of their livelihoods.

Neo-Luddites probably won’t go around smashing computers, but the hidden costs of technology are at the movement’s core. Neo-Luddites are demanding that we don’t “just say yes” to technologies ranging from genetic engineering of growth hormones (seen by many as a threat to family farms) to the medical engineering of in vitro fertilization (which some see as an attack on women’s emancipation).

Whether or not we agree with such specifics, the neo-Luddite point of view is definitely thought-provoking. “People have become much more circumspect about the impacts of new technologies,” said Harvey Wasserman, anti-nuclear activist and author, in one of the Utne pieces.

The piece in Harper’s was similarly circumspect, though narrower in scope. A 13-page transcript of an electronic forum, lifted from the Sausalito-based WELL (Whole Earth ‘Lectronic Link) computer bulletin board, it began with Harper’s posing the question, “What is the hacker ethic, and does it survive?”

The word hacker once meant a compulsive programmer, but it’s been co-opted by mainstream media into a word for someone once known as a “cracker,”who illegally breaks into computer systems for nefarious reasons. The WELL-based exchange revealed some fascinating data about hackers and crackers. It touched on everything from free speech to legal restrictions on computers and modems, debates on perception vs. reality, and name-calling (one participant called a hacker a “punk,” and was rewarded the next day with his complete TRW credit report printed on-line).

“The flaw in this discussion is the distorted image the media promote of the hacker as ‘whiz,’” wrote one former hacker, Adelaide. “The problem is that the one who gets caught obviously isn’t. I haven’t seen a story yet on a true genius hacker. . . . The genius hackers are busy doing constructive things or are so good no one’s caught them yet.”

That last phrase reminded me of a chat I had with James Kalin, researcher for Moraga-based Maxis Corp., after a session on viruses at the recent Artificial Life conference in Santa Fe. Kalin is certain there are plenty of uncaught geniuses writing clever viruses that dive into databases, suck out information, and leave without a trace.

“The real pros are probably operating fairly freely in the areas of industrial espionage, competitor intelligence and stock manipulation,”he says. “That’s where the real money is.”

The “freedom of speech” issue seemed most crucial for many participating in the WELL-based forum. Dave Hughes, a retired West Pointer who runs his own bulletin board, wrote, “Although computers are part “property’ and part “premises’ (which suggests a need for privacy), they are supremely instruments of speech. I don’t want any congressional King Georges treading on my cursor. We must continue to have absolute freedom of electronic speech!”

But Robert Horvitz, the Washington correspondent for Whole Earth Review, made a point I’d not thought of: “You may shout ‘Revolution!’ from the rooftops all you want, and the post office will obligingly deliver your recipes for nitroglycerin. But acting on that information exposes you to criminal prosecution,” he wrote.

“The philosophical problem posed by hacking is that computer programs transcend this distinction: They are pure language that dictates action when read by the device being addressed,” he adds. “In that sense, a program is very different from a novel, a play, or even a recipe: Actions result automatically from the machine reading the words.

“. . . Blurring the distinction between language and action, as computer programming does, could eventually undermine the First Amendment or at least force society to limit its application. That’s a very high price to pay, even for all the good things that computers make possible.”