The Way of the Hacker

By Thomas Fonseca

For those of you have preconceptions about the word "Hacker," let me give you my current definition:

"Hacker - One who hacks to pieces anything that seems interesting or unhackable. Especially if society at large claims that you are not supposed to. To disassemble, break down, understand and assimilate anything new to the point that it becomes part of your overall understanding of things. To go where you are not supposed to go, to know what you are not supposed to know and to see what you are not supposed to see and to do it in spite of a very clever, multilayered security system."

For many people the word hacker carries a negative connotation, as one who sometimes goes too far and has to be locked up to protect corporate, or even government security. But those are really just a very small subset of hackers. Some hackers actually go on to create a system of spiritual development that can eventually lead to enlightenment. What might that do to corporate and government security… if everyone became enlightened the DOW Industrial Average would most definitely drop sharply.

And indeed there was once a very spiritual hacker. His life ended before the computer revolution began but he was a hacker nonetheless. And since he had no digital frontiers to hack upon and since he was so very spiritual(as all great hackers are), he hacked at the greatest and most highly guarded secret of them all. This old hacker set out to hack nothing less than the human spirit! To find out where it lives and how to access it. He hacked relentlessly and with true abandon at all that was at that time sacred and unhackable.

This clever old hacker developed a way of going online without using a modem, or even a computer. He did not need to dial into his local P.O.P.(Point Of Presence) because he was his own P.O.P! His access provider was internal and he always logged on as "root" with no password. And when he was done he showed others how to hack until they too could become their own system administrators and this made him famous. People are still writing books about him and his extraordinary hacking methods…