This brochure outlines, in general terms, the future role of Western Union as a nationwide information utility, which will enable subscribers to efficiently, immediately, the required information flow to facilitate the conduct of business and other affairs.

Ezzel az egy szép mondattal kezdődik az utóbbi év leglenyűgözőbb dokumentuma. A szöveget 1965-ben írták, jóval azelőtt, hogy az ARPANET első gépét bekapcsolták volna. Ennek ellenére az írás nem igazán szól a hálózat kiépítéséről. A legnagyobb geek mítoszt, az internet teremtéstörténetét, egészen más megvilágításba helyezi ez az ötletelős üzleti dokumentum. A héroszaink - Baran, Licklider, Taylor stb - hőstette egyszercsak szükségszerűséggé válik.

Nagy teljesítményű számítógpek vannak, létezik nagysebességű adatátvitel, minden más csak mérnöki probléma, mint annak idején a villamosenergia-hálózat kialakítása volt. Az áramos hasonlatot tovább is viszi a szöveg. Az energiát termelő turbina folyamatosan fejlődött, de a lényege nem változott meg soha. Hasonló a Western Union szerint a számítógép is. Gyorsabb lesz, erősebb, hatékonyabb, de a lényege marad. Ha belegondolunk, a személyi számítógépekig ez az állítás igaz is marad.

A Western Union jövője csak kicsit hasonlít napjainkra. Nincsenek például olyan számítógépes telefonfülkék, ahonnan adatokat lehetne lekérni a digitális közművet használni. Vannak közös könyvtári katalógusok, azonnal frissülő tőzsdei adatok, sőt a netről még azt is meg lehet tudni, mennyit késik a vonat. Számítási kapacitást akár ma is tudunk bérelni, de ’65 óta párszor megjárta az útját az inga az erős felhő és az erős munkaállomás között.

• Western Union Strategic Plans (PDF)

Privacy is necessary for an open society in the electronic age. Privacy is not secrecy. A private matter is something one doesn’t want the whole world to know, but a secret matter is something one doesn’t want anybody to know. Privacy is the power to selectively reveal oneself to the world.

If two parties have some sort of dealings, then each has a memory of their interaction. Each party can speak about their own memory of this; how could anyone prevent it? One could pass laws against it, but the freedom of speech, even more than privacy, is fundamental to an open society; we seek not to restrict any speech at all. If many parties speak together in the same forum, each can speak to all the others and aggregate together knowledge about individuals and other parties. The power of electronic communications has enabled such group speech, and it will not go away merely because we might want it to.

Since we desire privacy, we must ensure that each party to a transaction have knowledge only of that which is directly necessary for that transaction. Since any information can be spoken of, we must ensure that we reveal as little as possible. In most cases personal identity is not salient. When I purchase a magazine at a store and hand cash to the clerk, there is no need to know who I am. When I ask my electronic mail provider to send and receive messages, my provider need not know to whom I am speaking or what I am saying or what others are saying to me; my provider only need know how to get the message there and how much I owe them in fees. When my identity is revealed by the underlying mechanism of the transaction, I have no privacy. I cannot here selectively reveal myself; I must always reveal myself.

Therefore, privacy in an open society requires anonymous transaction systems. Until now, cash has been the primary such system. An anonymous transaction system is not a secret transaction system. An anonymous system empowers individuals to reveal their identity when desired and only when desired; this is the essence of privacy.

Privacy in an open society also requires cryptography. If I say something, I want it heard only by those for whom I intend it. If the content of my speech is available to the world, I have no privacy. To encrypt is to indicate the desire for privacy, and to encrypt with weak cryptography is to indicate not too much desire for privacy. Furthermore, to reveal one’s identity with assurance when the default is anonymity requires the cryptographic signature.

We cannot expect governments, corporations, or other large, faceless organizations to grant us privacy out of their beneficence. It is to their advantage to speak of us, and we should expect that they will speak. To try to prevent their speech is to fight against the realities of information. Information does not just want to be free, it longs to be free. Information expands to fill the available storage space. Information is Rumor’s younger, stronger cousin; Information is fleeter of foot, has more eyes, knows more, and understands less than Rumor.

We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must come together and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to take place. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but electronic technologies do.

We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy with cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digital signatures, and with electronic money.

Cypherpunks write code. We know that someone has to write software to defend privacy, and since we can’t get privacy unless we all do, we’re going to write it. We publish our code so that our fellow Cypherpunks may practice and play with it. Our code is free for all to use, worldwide. We don’t much care if you don’t approve of the software we write. We know that software can’t be destroyed and that a widely dispersed system can’t be shut down.

Cypherpunks deplore regulations on cryptography, for encryption is fundamentally a private act. The act of encryption, in fact, removes information from the public realm. Even laws against cryptography reach only so far as a nation’s border and the arm of its violence. Cryptography will ineluctably spread over the whole globe, and with it the anonymous transactions systems that it makes possible.

For privacy to be widespread it must be part of a social contract. People must come and together deploy these systems for the common good. Privacy only extends so far as the cooperation of one’s fellows in society. We the Cypherpunks seek your questions and your concerns and hope we may engage you so that we do not deceive ourselves. We will not, however, be moved out of our course because some may disagree with our goals.

The Cypherpunks are actively engaged in making the networks safer for privacy. Let us proceed together apace.

Onward.

Eric Hughes kiáltványa körülbelül egy évvel a cypherpunks csapat első találkozója után született. Bár a szöveg nem kezdődik olyan erősen, mint May „kísértet járja be Európát” parafrázisa, de nagy igényeket és nagy ígéreteket ír le. Megjelenése után sokan felkapták a kiáltványt, rivaldafénybe állítva a csoportot. Például a kiáltvány 1993-as megjelenését követően születtek a Wired, a Village Voice és a Whole Earth Review-ban a cypherpunkokról szóló cikkei. Az erős szöveg választ is provokált, Bram Cohenét, a Bittorrent atyjáét hamarosan ki is rakjuk.

A specter is haunting the modern world, the specter of crypto anarchy.

Computer technology is on the verge of providing the ability for individuals and groups to communicate and interact with each other in a totally anonymous manner. Two persons may exchange messages, conduct business, and negotiate electronic contracts without ever knowing the True Name, or legal identity, of the other. Interactions over networks will be untraceable, via extensive re- routing of encrypted packets and tamper-proof boxes which implement cryptographic protocols with nearly perfect assurance against any tampering. Reputations will be of central importance, far more important in dealings than even the credit ratings of today. These developments will alter completely the nature of government regulation, the ability to tax and control economic interactions, the ability to keep information secret, and will even alter the nature of trust and reputation.

The technology for this revolution—and it surely will be both a social and economic revolution—has existed in theory for the past decade. The methods are based upon public-key encryption, zero-knowledge interactive proof systems, and various software protocols for interaction, authentication, and verification. The focus has until now been on academic conferences in Europe and the U.S., conferences monitored closely by the National Security Agency. But only recently have computer networks and personal computers attained sufficient speed to make the ideas practically realizable. And the next ten years will bring enough additional speed to make the ideas economically feasible and essentially unstoppable. High-speed networks, ISDN, tamper-proof boxes, smart cards, satellites, Ku-band transmitters, multi-MIPS personal computers, and encryption chips now under development will be some of the enabling technologies.

The State will of course try to slow or halt the spread of this technology, citing national security concerns, use of the technology by drug dealers and tax evaders, and fears of societal disintegration. Many of these concerns will be valid; crypto anarchy will allow national secrets to be trade freely and will allow illicit and stolen materials to be traded. An anonymous computerized market will even make possible abhorrent markets for assassinations and extortion. Various criminal and foreign elements will be active users of CryptoNet. But this will not halt the spread of crypto anarchy.

Just as the technology of printing altered and reduced the power of medieval guilds and the social power structure, so too will cryptologic methods fundamentally alter the nature of corporations and of government interference in economic transactions. Combined with emerging information markets, crypto anarchy will create a liquid market for any and all material which can be put into words and pictures. And just as a seemingly minor invention like barbed wire made possible the fencing-off of vast ranches and farms, thus altering forever the concepts of land and property rights in the frontier West, so too will the seemingly minor discovery out of an arcane branch of mathematics come to be the wire clippers which dismantle the barbed wire around intellectual property.

Arise, you have nothing to lose but your barbed wire fences!

A szöveget a Cypherpunks lista egyik vezéralakja Timothy C. May írta 1988-ban. Először a Crypto ’88 konferencián olvasta fel, majd később az 1989-es és ’90-es Hackers konferencián is beszélt a titkosítós szép új világról. A szöveg aztán előkerült 1992-ben a Cypherpunks alapítógyűlésén is. Tegyük gyorsan hozzá, a csoportnak volt saját kiálványa is, amit Eric Hughes írt, az a holnapi program.

A digitális adatbázisok azért királyak, mert egy raklap, nyomtatásban már sehogy sem megszerezhető anyagot lehet letölteni róluk. A JSTOR-ban például fent van¹ a Mississippi Review 47/48-as száma, ami később Storming The Reality Studio néven látott könyvben napvilágot.

A cyberpunk történetét kutatóknak, az alkalmanként előforduló posztmodern rizsa ellen kellően felvértezetteknek alap olvasmány a könyv. Szerepel benne az LSD után új örömöket találó Timothy Leary, de ott vannak a Mozgalom akkor még fiatal lázadói is. Ez az a pillanat, ahol a cyberpunk elkezd kanonizálódni. Valamivel több mint öt év és megjelennek a Time magazin címlapján, instant pánikot váltva ki az eredeti mozgalmárokból.

Amikor a digitális kultúra történetéről beszélünk, könnyen eredeztethetjük vissza az egészet az amerikai katonai-ipari komplexumig. Pedig, ha egy kicsit alaposabban megvizsgáljuk a helyzetet, hamar rátalálunk egy első ránézésre eléggé valószerűtlen csoportra is, az ellenkulturális mozgalomra. Ahogy Fred Turner rámutat, a hatvanas években erőre kapó ellenkulturális mozgalomnak két fő irányzata volt az Egyesült Államokban: az új baloldal és az új kommunalisták. Kapásból az elsőre gondolunk, amikor az ellenkultúra kapcsolatát keressük a digitális kultúrával, hiszen ennek a csoportnak volt a jelszava a hatvanas évek közepén bevezetett számítógépes katalógusrendszer ellen, hogy I am a human being, do not fold, spindle or mutilate me. Az új kommunalisták viszont nekünk most egy sokkal érdekesebb csoport. A hatvanas-hetvenes években a korábbiakhoz képest lehetetlensok ember kelt útra, hogy az addigi társadalomtól függetlenül működő új kommunákat hozzanak létre. Ők egyáltalán nem írtóztak a technológiától, sőt, olyan eszközöket láttak benne, amivel egy jobb világot lehet felépíteni.

Ennek a csoportnak volt a programadó lapja, elsődleges művelődési pontja, fóruma, enciklopédiája az 1968 és 1972 között kiadott Whole Earth Catalog, ami sokáig csak egy ezen felnőtt generációnak a közös háttérismeretét jelentette, az utóbbi pár évben került újra elő, pont mint közös gyökere az infóhippiknek, a zöld mozgalomnak, meg gyakorlatilag mindennek, ami utána következett. A katalógusban minden megtalálható volt, ami egy kommuna életéhez kellhet, a földműveléstől az ön-művelésig, útközben szót ejtve a csillagászatról és Buckminster Fuller geodézikus gömbjeiről is, valóban úgy érezhette az olvasó, hogy kezében fogja a kulcsot az élethez, a világmindenséghez meg mindenhez. „Olyanok lettünk, mint az Isten,” csavarja ki a bibliai idézetet Stewart Brand a Katalógus bevezetőjében, „ideje belejönnünk.”

Az összes cikket, leírást és ajánlást a katalógus körül hamar kialakuló közösség hozta össze, stílusában olyan az egész, mintha egy négyszáz oldalon keresztül folyó BoingBoing lenne. (Ahogy a BB elődjének is tartja a Katalógust).

Egész könyveket lehetne róla írni, és írtak is, most csak arra hívnám fel a figyelmet, hogy a WholeEarth.com címen digitálisan hozzáférhető beszkennelt PDF-ként az összes példány, beleértve a lapot folytató CoEvolution Quarterly számait is. Vegyétek, de legalábbis lapozzatok bele. Persze igazán akkor üt, ha valóban kézbeveszed, de a tartalom és a lelkesedés szkennelve is átjön.

• WholeEarth.com

Egyéb olvasnivaló a Katalógusról:

• Kevin Kelly, a katalógus késői szerkesztője emlékezik: The Whole Earth Blogalog
• Csomó idézet: The Whole Earth Effect

Don’t tell anyone this isn’t what we’re supposed to be working on.

(Ray Tomlinson, miközben kitalálta az e-mailt)

Idén egy csomó remek dolog negyven éves. Például a UNIX, az Arpanet és Roy barátunk a sas leszálltból. Ezek közül a világháló elődjéről készített remek emlékező podcastsorozatot a brit Open University. A kezdő beszélgetés John Naughtonnal, az egyik kedvenc brit újságírómmal és a Open University oktatójával készült. Naughtonnak többek között úgy van köze az internettörténethez, hogy írt egy remek könyvet - amit a Worldshotson laudáltam már hosszasan - a hálózatról, azokról az atyjákról, akiket ismerünk, illetve azokat, akiket el szoktunk felejteni.

A felvezető beszélgetésben is ezek a témák kerülnek elő. Aztán pedig megszólalnak maguk a legendák. Paul Baran fájóan hiányzik, pedig még él. Cserébe szóhoz jut Vint Cerf, Tim Berners-Lee, Ray Tomlinson, Jerry Yang vagy éppen Shawn Fanning. A kevéssé szokványos bandából pedig beszerkesztették a *L0pht - a túlvilágról nem rég visszatért L0phtcrack törőprogramot összerakó csapat - két hackerének, Mudge-nak és Weld Pondnak 1998-as nyilatkozatát.

Az egész anyag csak pár másodperccel hosszabb kilencven percnél, simán ráférne egy TDK Chrome kazettára, hogy rongyosra hallgassuk. Nincs mentségetek nem letölteni és meghallgatni.

A legtartósabb legenda a hackeléssel kapcsolatban, hogy kezdetben voltak a patyolattiszta hackerek, akik a rendszerek iránti kíváncsiságtól vezérelve kalandoztak a telefonos, számítógépes hálózatokon, aztán jött a sajtó és összemosta őket a gépeket feltörő, warezolt szoftvert áruló aljanéppel. Az igazság valahol félúton van, a patyolatból is visza kell venni és az aljanépből is. A legrégebbi, a hacker szót tartalmazó sajtóbeli szöveget Fred Shapiro ásta elő az American Dialect Society levelezőlistáján. A cikk az MIT The Tech nevet viselő egyetemi lapjának 1963. november 20-án megjelent számából származik, és a telefonrendszert vaktárcsázással és kísérletezéssel elfoglaló hackerekről szól. Az évszám főleg azért fontos, mert a hackerkultúra egyik bölcsőjének számító Marvin Minsky-féle mesterséges intelligencia laboratórium is még csak négy éve üzemelt, lopott szoftverek pedig még egyáltalán nem voltak.

Services curtailed

Telephone hackers active

<br/> by Henry Lichstein<br/>

Many telephone services have been curtailed because of so-called hackers, according to Рrofessor Carltoп Tucker, administrator of the Institute phone system.

Stating „IT means the students whoo are doing this are depriving the rest of you of priviliges you otherwise might have.” Prof. Tucker noted that two or three students are expelled each year for abuses of the phone system.

The hackers have accomplished such things as typing up all the tie-lines between Harvard and МIT, or making longdistance calls by charging them to a local radar installation. One method involved connecting the PDP 1 computer to the phone system to search the lines until a dial tone, indicating an outstde line, was found.

Tie lines connect MIT’s phone system to many areas qithout a prorata chanrge. Among the tie-lines discovered have been ones to the Millstone Radar Facility, the Sudbury defense installation, IBM in Kingston, New York, and the MITRE Corporation.

Tucker warns hackers

Commenting on these incidents Prof. Tucker said „If any of these people are caught (by the telephone company) they are liable to be put in jail. I try to warn them and protect them.”

While Tucker felt „we don’t have too much trouble with the boys; we appreciate their curiosity,” he also said that repeated involvement, for instance, caused the expulsion from the Institute of one member of the Class of ’63 one week before his graduation.

Because of the „hacking”, the majority of the MIT phones are „trapped”. They are set up so tie-line calls may not be made. Originally, these tie-lines were open to general use.

Lines Found by Force

While the hackers have resorted to some esoteric methods, many tielines have been found by „brute force techniques” - mass dialing until something „interesting” is found. Another, more urbane method, has been the judicious perusal of telephone directories. To quote one accomplished hacker, „The field is always open to experimentation.”

While stating „We attempt to stop (hacking) because it impairs our relations with the phone company, and hurts the service for the rest of the students,’ Tucker observed that the MIT phone system, serving a community of about 14,000 persons, is as large as that for a small town.

Including Lincoln Laboratories, which accounts for over 50% of costs, the Institute’s phone bill exceeds $1,000,000 each year. This is the third largest bill in New England.

The General Electric Company has the largest phone bill. Raytheon Corporation has the second largest bill in the New England area.

• A The Tech archívuma az 1963-as évre
• Telephone hackers active by Henry Lichstein (PDF)

Hála jár még Gustavo Duartének, aki Shapiro leletét ásta elő pár évvel később. Amerikát bezzeg elég volt egyszer felfedezni.

Csúnyán kifutottam az időből a Meetupon, pedig. Nagyjából valami ilyesmit szerettem volna elmondani (a nagy szünet a képváltást jelenti. A prezentáció elérhető a http://bergengocia.net/kacat/gazs-olpc.pdf címen.

Amit nagyon látványosan ki fogok hagyni, az az, hogy miért jó ötlet, ha egyáltalán az, szegény éhező afrikai kisgyerekeknek a kezébe adni egy ilyet, főleg mert ezt akár nálunk is bevezethenék, nem kell olyan messzire menni. Nicholas Negroponte 2005-ben indította a projektet, azzal a céllal, hogy egy olyan laptopot hozzanak létre, ami a lehető legtöbb gyerekhez eljuttatva a kezükben egy forradalmi tanulási, önfejlesztési eszközként működhet.

Egy elképesztően lelkesítő gépet vizionált: kicsi, tartós, alacsony teljesítményű, cserébe hosszú élettartamú laptopok, melyeken tetőtől-talpig szabad szoftvert fut, és ha elég nagy tételben vásárolják őket, száz dolláros darabáron ki lehet hozni az egészet.

De lépjünk vissza kettőt. Amikor a számítógép plusz tanulás előkerül, általában két kontextusban történik ez: “tanítsunk géphasználatot, mert a Való Életben hasznos dolog a Word meg az Ofisz meg a gépírás”, illetve “tanítsunk számítógéppel olyan dolgokat, amiket amúgy nehéz lenne megértetni”. Ahogy azt látjuk a mai iskolákban, az előbbit lényegesen egyszerűbb implementálni, az utóbbihoz kapcsolódik viszont ez a projekt és a mögötte álló elmélet.

Két nagy nevet iszonyat fontos említeni itt, az egyik Seymour Papert és a konstrukcionista oktatáselmélete: arról szól, hogy a gyerekek egész addig tök jól megtanulnak dolgokat, amíg iskolába nem küldik őket, ahol hirtelen az önálló felfedezés helyett kész információkat kell megjegyezniük majd visszaböfögniük, ami nagyon nem hatékony. Ehelyett bátorítani kéne a gyerekeket, hogy maguknak fedezzék fel a dolgokat.

Erre hozza létre a LOGO környezetet, amin gondolom mindenki átesett. Érdekes, hogy bár az lett volna a lényege, hogy a gyerek a teknős mozgatásán, trial and erroron keresztül absztrakt fogalmakat fedez fel, sajátít el (rekurzió, stb), mire integrálódott az egész az oktatásba, Pascal-előkészítő gyakorlatokká vált.

A másik nagy hős pedig Alan Kay, ugye objektum-orientált programozás, satöbbi, most a Dynabook koncepciója miatt érdekes: ‘68-ban rajzolt egy eszközt, ami gyerektől a felnőttig végigkíséri az ember életét, egyszerre könyvtár és önkifejezési és kommunikációs eszköz és játszótér … Szóval ebből a koncepcióból és az ehhez kapcsolódó kutatásokból nőtte ki magát a személyi számítógép, és a laptoppal majdnem elértük az álmot. Az OLPC-vel érünk igazán körbe.

…És ez a gép, amit végül sikerült összehozni. Kicsi-zöld-nyuszifüles, végül inkább $200 lett az ára, és végül inkább egy erős prototípus lett a késztermék, de egy csomó érdekes ötlet került bele.

• kurbli például nem. Egészen addig szerepelt a tervek között, stabil áramellátás hiányában, stb, míg Kofi Annan személyesen le nem törte a kart egy sajtótájékoztatón.

• a kijelzője viszont zseniális. 1200×900 pixel (7”en, ez 200dpi!), napfényben is olvasható- feketefehér módban. Színesen lényegesen rosszabb, de még így is nagyon vonzó tech.

• újrafeltalálták a GUI-ját, Sugar néven, ez egy PyGTK-ban írt egészen furcsa szerzet, de van benne pár átmentendő ötlet

• például a napló-nézet. A hagyományos UNIX fájlrendszer a felahsználó elől rejtve van, helyette azokat a dokumentumokat, képeket, hangokat, weboldalakat, chatlogokat látja, amikkel mostanában dolgozott. Tök hasznos, akarok ilyet a desktopomra.

• meg a kollaborációs fícsör is ügyes: mindenütt törekedtek arra, hogy több gyerek egyszerre tudjon résztvenni a dolgokban: nem csak csetszobákat tudsz könnyen létrehozni, de van élő kollaboratív wyswig szövegszerkesztés, böngészés, pár játék, ilyesmik.

Eléggé nem úgy alakult a projekt sorsa, mint ahogy azt előre kitálták: például közel sem úgy néz ki a hardver/szoftver, mint ahogy papíron, alig maradt már értelmes emberük, szinte minden támogató kifarolt, alig került gyerek kezébe a notiból.

A projekt krül somolygó Intel, amikor még úgy tűnt, több millió XO-t tudnak értékesíteni, a legnagyobb monokultúrát ever ha minden jól megy, kiszállt, mivel a konkurencia csipjét használta végül a projekt. Létrehozták a saját Classmate PC programjukat, ráadásul standard Windowsos notikkal. Van is egy ilyen osztály a Józsefvárosban.

Hamar rájöttek a hardvergyártók, hogy itt biza piac van. Elsőnek ugye az Asus jött ki alacsony teljesítményű, cserébe olcsó kisnotival, majd hamar követte gyakorlatilag mindenki más. Mostanra már egy lényegesen jobb teljesítményű gépet lehet venni piaci áron annyiért, amennyibe az Xo kerül.

Ugye úgy volt, hogy nagyon nagy tételben kell rendelni, hogy működjön a dolog. Mondjuk kormányszinten. Rengeteg kormány ígérte, hogy vesz, Nigéria egy milliót, ilyenek, aztán amikor kellett volna fizetni, visszavonták a rendelést. A havi leszállított pármillió tételből lett összesen 2007 óta 1M.

És ebből durván 200e a karácsonyi adományozóprogramban kelt el.

Az egyik legfontosabb ok, amiért nem vették a kormányok, hogy az OLPC-n szándékosan nem futottt Windows. Hogy ezzel is kényszerítsék a Windows-skillek betanítása helyett a másik fajta tanításmódot. De amikor úgy tűnt, hogy emiatt senkinek se kell, Negroponte bedobta, hogy na jó, mégis lehet. Csak vegyék a laptopokat.

Itt ugrotta meg a cápát a projekt: Erre természetesen hatalmas felhördülés, mind a projekten kívül: lásd Stallman, aki éppen akkor cuccolt át teljesen egy ilyen gépre, pont mert színtisztán szabad szoftveren futott; és a projekten belül: sokan úgy érezték, hogy ezzel elárulták a projekt alapgondolatát: ha a laptopeladás a lényeg, akkor nem oktatási alapítványra van szükség.

Ekkor lépett ki az addigi gyakorlati vezetője a projektnek, Walter Bender, magával vive az egész Sugar csapatot. Hogy ők most egy rendes oktatási projekt lesznek. Nem sokra rá a sztárkóderük is elég keményen beszólt, a harmadik érdekes ember pedig külön céget alapított a piacosítható termékével.

Mi maradt tehát? Se szoftveres, se hardveres, Negroponte egyre inkább kapkod, most éppen ezzel a mockuppal járt Davosban: érintőképernyős, ötven dolláros csilijó laptop. Nem hiszem, hogy valaha is lesz belőle valami. A Sugarból még lehet, azt érdemes figyelni. Tanulság? Az van, rengeteg. Egynek mondjuk legyen az, hogy bár kezdésnek is meredek volt a koncepció, akár még lehetett is volna belőle valami, ha nem rontanak el mindent ami lehetséges útközben.

Linkek, ömlesztve

• OLPC hómpédzs
• de inkább
• Sugarlabs hómpédzs
• Papert cikkek
• Papert: Critique of Technocentrism
• LOGO hómpédzs
• Mi lett a LOGO-ból a hagyományos iskolákban?
• LOGO történet
• Dynabookról szakdoga
• Sugarlabs olvasnivalók
• Hardware specification
• Timeline 2008-ig
• Timeline laptop.org, 2007-ig
• Gizmodo: secret origin
• Gizmodo: part 2
• Gizmodo: part 3
• XO Files: I Want to Believe
• Krstic: Sic Transit Gloria Laptopi
• RMS: OLPC+Windows=gonoszság
• NYTimes: Seeing No Progress, Some Schools Drop Laptops
• BusinessWeek: The Educational Philosophy Controversy
• Economist: One Clunky Laptop Per Child (http://docsban megy)
• Economist: One Clunky Laptop Per Child (http://rebuttal)
• Intel Quits Effort to Get Computers to Children
• Worldchanging: Zuckerman a notiról 2006-ban
• OLPC „refocusing”
• Orders
• Deployments on Gmaps
• LOGO-pentagramma
• Sugar on a Stick

A világra még mindig megsértődött Ted Nelson 2008 végén adta ki saját kiadásban, a Lulu.com-on keresztül, a számítástechnika történetéről szóló könyvét. Ha lenne rá húsz dollárom ésvagy lehetne direkt digitális formában rendelni, már rég beszámoltam volna arról, hogy milyen is, egyelőre csak a részletes tartalomjegyzéket olvashatjuk, melyben gyönyörűen beszól mindenkinek, aki kicsit is számít a témában, de főleg azoknak, akik úgy gondolják, hogy a hierarchia jó dolog. (Eredetileg azt terveztem, hogy legalább a tartalomjegyzéket lefordítom, de aztán valahol a -14-es fejezetnél inkább hagytam az egészet a francba; a címbeli szójátékot úgyse lehetne szépen visszaadni (lásd greeks bearing gifts, lásd Vergilius, lásd) , most inkább egyszerűen linkelem:

-27 Hierarchy (ancient beginnings) Hierarchy is the official metaphysic of the computer world. (Aristotle, the medieval Catholic Church and the Dewey Decimal System have all reinforced this concept,) Many tekkies think all structure is hierarchical, and have arranged not to see any other kinds.

They say if you have a hammer everything looks like a nail. Today’s hierarchical computer tools (especially object-oriented languages and XML) make hierarchy an imposition, not an option. Current tools cannot represent cross-connection, interpenetration, overlap, or the other tangles of the real world— let alone opinions about it. …

• Itt a teljes tartalomjegyzék
• Itt rendelhető meg a könyv

Azért irónia rendesen, hogy a Webet kell használnia a Xanadu feltalálójának, hogy el is jusson az emberekhez a mondanivalója.

Originally appeared in Internet Underground. This is one of the best pieces on hacking I have ever read. If you like it half as much as I did it’s definitely worth a read. Thanks to Richard for permission to put this on the site. - Harl

Don’t call them hackers, call them homo sapiens hackii — human beings who are „back-engineered” by their symbiotic relationship with computer networks to frame reality in ways shaped by that interaction. They’re not a new species, but they are a new variety, and just like the Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, they’re everywhere. But how can you tell the real thing?

Looks, jargon, and hard-guy handles are too easy to imitate. Besides, real hackers blend in well with their surroundings — that’s the point of social engineering, after all — and hide in large corporations, high-tech start-ups and IT departments, and intelligence, security, and law enforcement.

Some don’t even use computers very much.

„I couldn’t hack my way out of a wet paper bag,” confesses William Knowles who hangs out on a hacker listserv. „But information hacking, social engineering, dumpster diving, yes — and I’m a terror on the telephone. I am the gatekeeper’s worst nightmare!”.

„It comes down to a common quest for knowledge,” William says. „Why does it do what it does? Who, what, where, when, why, how?”

Hackers are distinguished by a hunger for knowledge, for seeing things whole, for knowing how things work. Their power derives from the critical knowledge that leverages other knowledge, their enthusiasm from an adrenaline rush that comes when they finally make that connection, solve that puzzle.

When the door against which you’ve been banging your head suddenly dissolves and you slip effortlessly to the next level — that’s the joy of hacking. But the game isn’t Doom or Quake, the game is life, and the playing field is the infinity of the wired world which your mind explores in the night like a stealth fighter.

Some hackers have been wired since early childhood; they see the world in the image of networks.

[„I started using computers when I was 8 on the local public library’s Apple IIe’s. I can’t remember not being able to program in AppleSoft. I still recall these strange POKE locations …” — Attitude Adjuster.]

[„One day I realized that I think like a computer, complete with IF, THEN and GOTO statements. I react to a situation by finding the most logical situation, then acting on it.” — Jaymz Tide]

When you learned as a child how to creep unnoticed into root under cover of darkness, or hide in a sniffer that’s a surrogate self so you can steal the secrets of the rich and powerful or observe the hidden life of corporations and governments, learn how it really is behind the fictions by which men live, then steal away at dawn leaving not so much as a single track in the melting snows of cyberspace — then you know what hacking means.

Hackers are men and women who go where they must go to learn what they must learn.

Often portrayed as rebellious heretics, hackers are in fact faithful followers of three gods:

• Odin, who hung cold and alone in a windswept tree for nine long days and nights, sleepless and single-hearted, in order to seize the knowledge of the Runes. The Runes, symbols of what the Greeks called logos, the creative power of the Word, the magic of consciousness acting on inanimate matter and making it plastic.

• the trickster Coyote, who some call Pan, his wry humor a grin in the shadows, his appetites and passions a firestorm of Dionysian ardor.

• Jesus the man, the earthy Jew, a real mensch rather than a dreamy-eyed Nordic nanny-of-the-planet, who refused to knuckle under to convention or the suffocating constraints of the lowest common denominator of the crowd.

Lighten Up

Hackers have a sense of humor.

Dr. Bergan Evans, an English professor at Northwestern, spoke with a chuckle in the early sixties of a social worker’s excessive worry about „juvenile delinquents” stealing cars. He remembered how he and his boyhood chums stole away in the night to loose the horses from a neighbor’s corral.

„It wasn’t called delinquency in my day,” he said. „It was called, ’boys will be boys.’”

We discover in the process of living life with gusto the boundaries we had better not cross, then learn how to set limits from within. The risks must be real or the rewards aren’t real.

„The callbacks started to terrify me,” admits Attitude Adjuster of his early days of phreaking.”I have a healthy fear of being busted. Thankfully I didn’t get busted, and I came out the better for it.”

So let’s lighten up. Hackers are not just whacked-out loners in darkened bedrooms, cackling like Beevis and Butthead as they break into your bank account. Hackers at their best are trekkers who hike the peaks and valleys of the virtual world. The infrastructure of the world is a puzzle invented to test their mettle. They fail into failure again and again before failing into success: the non-pattern of chaotic data suddenly coalesces, the dots connect, and anxiety vanishes.

You see how it works! Bingo! You understand how it all hangs together.

This is not the malevolent caricature invented by the media to feed the fearful projections of those who don’t know. This is humanity at its best.

So if my description evokes judgement, a desire to chastise these high spirits like a stern schoolmaster, beat down that restless intelligence and … control them, get them back into the box; then quit reading right now and turn the page.

But if you know what I’m talking about — if you have ever bent your back too long under a low ceiling defined by the rigidly righteous and finally had to stand up, your head crashing through plaster into thin air — then read on. This is a partial glimpse through the eyes of some of the best and the brightest of the promise and possibilities of the wired world.

Living by a Vision

Technically, it’s called „living proleptically” — when a new possibility breaks into the present with such compelling power that we have no choice but to live out of that vision as if it’s real. We adopt a new point of reference, and by living as if it has already happened, we make it real.

Hang out with hackers and you’ll find yourself moving toward their way of framing reality. That’s how we know that the tao — the way things are flowing — is moving in that direction.

Example: a teacher I know was supposed to teach her fourth graders how to use computers but didn’t know how. She made a secret pact with her three brightest students to meet with her after school to teach her computing so she could teach the other students computing.

Of course many hackers are bored with school! They haven’t the patience to wait while the teachers catch up. They don’t want information delivered at the plodding pace of a curriculum through a command-and-control structure, they want to get out there on the wires and get it themselves.

„The administrator that I work for at school,” says Attitude Adjuster, „lets me hack the system all I want. He doesn’t interfere because he doesn’t know what I’m doing. Sometimes he asks me, what should I do next? I can’t believe what I’m hearing. I want to say, You mean you haven’t figured that out yet from the logical progression of things? I used to try to tell him what to do next and he would ask, why? I stopped answering because any answer I gave him, he couldn’t understand. He could never see the Big Picture so the details never connected in a way that made sense.”

[It’s not just teachers that younger hackers can’t hack. It’s authority figures in government as well.

A US Senator’s aide described one of the first interactive hearings in Congress. They arranged a network of Powerbooks connected to the Internet. The senator, a man of considerable power, came in after everything was set up and they said, „Senator, begin your chat.”

He looked at the powerbook and said, „Hello? Hello?” When nothing happened, he asked the aide, „What do I do, talk to it?”

These are the people writing legislation about the Internet, telecommunications, the ground-rules for the wired world.

The aide adds that two thirds of those in congress don’t use e-mail.]

Se7en says, „There were a lot of great discoveries through the years, but the greatest was how I grew in knowledge in my own eyes. The giant telephone company and many of the all-knowing corporations really had very little clue as to what they were doing. The all-powerful government — starting wars, controlling your life — did not have a clue as to what a computer is or what it can do.”

A hacker and phreaker from the age of eleven, Se7en recently came up from the underground, looking for a little light and air. Now he lectures engineers in the aerospace industry on the psychology of hacking — how to tell from the tracks if an intruder is a trophy-hunting kid or an intelligence agent looking for proprietary data.

„The realization that all these people that as a kid you’re told to respect and fear, in a lot of ways you’re a lot smarter than many of these people….You find out there’s nothing special about these people. Here you are, some little fifteen or sixteen year old kid, you can do things that the phone company can’t even do or the government can’t even do.”

Living as if the new world is already here.

For some, that vision begins with a blinding light; for others it just happens to happen.

„My first computer was a Commodore 64,” says DIALTONE_, who works for a hightech Canadian company. „I started with games, but they bored me, so I started looking into the works of the computer. It fascinated the hell out of me!.” After getting his first modem and being turned on to hacking by the sysop of a BBS, he hacked into his first computer.

„As I was exploring. I had this feeling of … it was a feeling you can’t explain, anxiety to get a hold and see everything I could. Sure I was scared at first but that disappeared as I discovered what was in this machine.”

Modify, a co-founder of Listed Black Communications, remembers it similarly.

„My first real hack was into the system of a nuclear engineering company. I took the unshadowed password file, then went back to take a look at the system itself … wow, was it great! You’re torn between two emotions: one is, what if I screw up and leave my muddy footprints all over the computer? The other is, what does this thing do? What information does it hold? You are „god” over that machine.”

For Attitude Adjuster, the interest developed more gradually through conversations with kindred spirits.

„More than anything else it was something I talked about with other kids who used public computers in the library. We’d sit around and speculate about other systems, huddle around the single UNIX reference the library owned.”

The Machinery is Always On

Hackers are need-to-know machines, obsessively searching for a way to scratch that itch and gain momentary peace before it flares up again.

The popular perception of hackers as malicious warez kiddies downloading someone else’s code draws contempt from hackers who earn their knowledge with sleepless nights and relentless exploration.

Use someone else’s scripts to do something malicious or damage someone’s system?

„That’s not hacking,” says Yobie Benjamin, a respected strategic technologies consultant. Benjamin has worked with Netscape, Sun Microsystems, Boeing, Hewlett Packard and many others on prototyping, project development, and design. He knows that many respectable names in high-tech commerce earned their stripes as hackers.

„Sure, we all did some of that when we were kids, first starting out. Maybe that’s all you know how to do when you begin. But what moves me is, what’s out there? Hacking for me is more than a quest, it’s THE quest — the quest for knowledge.”

Listen to Modify: „When I went on to learn advanced programming languages, I would sit in a bookstore until closing time and just read up on all types of stuff — circuits, DNS, TCP/IP, firewalls, UNIX, Java — I have tons of books all over the house and that’s pretty much how I got into hacking, feeding my head with knowledge from books and classes in schools.”

Dark Tangent, the highly respected founder of DefCon, the annual summer convention for computer hackers, security specialists, intelligence personnel, journalists and IT professionals, reflected on what characterized the best hackers. „The defining characteristic is they see the Big Picture,” he said. „They have incredible amounts of knowledge and have gone into things at incredibly deep levels. There is such an immense base of knowledge about competing technologies, so if you can see the Big Picture … there’s often a defining moment when you see the whole thing come together.

„Everyone specializes so much,” he continued, „that it’s important to know people in all the different areas. You have to know what you don’t need to know and you have to know who you can call when you need to know it.”

That doesn’t sound like a loner who can’t talk face-to-face with another human being, does it?

„You need to surround yourself with intelligent people,” DT adds. „You don’t need to be a social genius, but it’s a lot more fun if you are. You can make it just trading tokens of knowledge, the currency of hacking, and advance through ’remote learning.’ But the network is not just computers, it’s knowledgeable people connected by computers.”

Do the Homework

Hackers have little patience with people who want to be spoon-fed hard-earned knowledge and won’t do the homework. A sure way to invite flames is to ask on a listserv, „Can someone please tell me how to hack Windows NT?”

Most „hacking sites” are dismissed as lists of links to other links, although, according to Se7en, „There are some good things out there — but you have to know where to look.”

Se7en, like most of the hackers with whom I spoke, connected with a mentor at a critical moment in his career. That mentor taught him how to look through trash for hours to find the few significant items that would gain entry to the telephone system; more importantly, his mentor taught him by example how to mentor.

„I tell people to learn the way I learn,” Se7en said. „Read read read, learn learn learn. Do everything you can to answer your own questions first. Get good books on UNIX or Windows NT security or TCP/IP, then come to me with the questions you can’t answer.”

By being available to provide information at the right moment to enable a learner to leverage what he already knows, Se7en defines the ideal coach.

„That’s why I surround myself with intelligent people,” Dark Tangent said. „My friends all know things I don’t. I never answer email that says ’teach me, teach me.’ The knowledge is out there for anyone who is committed. Give the word „hack” to a search engine and start plowing through the thousands of hits you get.” Modify remembers staying up all night coding text games and debugging others’ programs, learning by doing, One of his early connections was Ruff-Neck, who told him, „Learn as much as you can and don’t think of problems as problems. Think of them more as challenges.”

DIALTONE_ adds, „I’m not unwilling to help others, but I’m not going to teach a kid to hack. There’s no future in it and often someone who is just starting is focussed entirely on „illegal hacking” and will end up getting busted.”

He gives the example of a student at the high school where he works. Lots of people want to „run the network,” he says, but „she’s the only one willing to do what it takes to learn about it. She started asking specific pointed questions about networking. That earned her my undivided attention and assistance in learning.”

Artimage says, „Many people complain that older hackers won’t teach them anything or answer questions. First, these people taught themselves, no one gave them the information. Second, if you have researched your question to the best of your abilities beforehand, and it is a specific question it will most often be answered.

„Hackers teach themselves. That’s the whole point… If you want to crack into systems, you can have someone show you how, but to be a hacker means that you explore the system on your own…”

And finally, listen to Rogue Agent set someone straight on a listserv.

„You want to create hackers? Don’t tell them how to do this or that. Show them how to discover it for themselves. Those who have the innate drive will get the point and find tutorials written by experts or dive in and learn by trial and error. Those who don’t fall by the wayside, staying comfortable within the bounds of their safe little lives.”

The Journey Becomes a Quest

With power comes responsibility.

I was talking with Dead Addict about the adrenalin rush that comes when you discover valuable information and are tempted to use it. „That’s the trouble with being God,” he said. „You can look but you can’t touch.”

Maybe that’s what Dark Tangent means when he speaks of keeping your balance and „managing your ego,” which DT does by hanging out with smart friends. That keeps the limits of his own knowledge in perspective.

Perspective is needed as you move down the hacker’s path. You discover that the fact of hacking makes a commitment for you to pierce the veil of illusion and discover the truth. That can be lonely. It get cold out there, hanging night after night in a windswept tree.

„Your perspective changes as a result of learning how things really work,” DT observed. „I have had to recognize that my perception of reality is fundamentally different than that of people who don’t want to know how it really is. You can come off sounding cynical, but it isn’t cynicism, really, it’s just that you have had experiences they haven’t and that deeper reality becomes your point of departure and your point of reference.”

That’s why hackers necessarily build a community founded on camaraderie, mutual respect, and enough trust to get the job done balanced by a healthy dose of paranoia. That community is regulated by an informal system of norms and shared values, a Code derived from experience. Like all Codes, the Hackers’ Code is a plumb line enabling hackers to „true themselves up” when they get off track.

„The ethic is there — it really is,” insists Attitude Adjuster. „There will always be malicious kids who don’t understand, and maybe all of us were there at one time, but evolution will single them out. They’ll either get busted or close enough to being busted (like I was) to get scared back onto the right path.”

DIALTONE_ and his cohorts in =x9= drew up a code of ethics that reveals why the world of hacking can look so different inside than from outside. The Code is proscriptive (don’t do it) about intentional damage to others’ systems but pragmatic as to how to protect yourself when crossing the borders that must be crossed to hack in the first place.

The contextual shift through which our culture is moving is immense. Hackers live in the gray areas that MUST exist as we redefine ourselves. Many began hacking when there was nothing illegal about cracking games, copying an article, or singing campsongs without a permit.

Intellectual property rights? International traffic in digital goods? The ownership of a link?

„How clearly are these boundaries defined?” laughed Tim Muth, an attorney who specializes in cyberlaw. „Come back in five years when we’ve had some cases. I’ll tell you then.”

The Spirit of Hacking

Hackers refuse to be defined by conventional wisdom, conventional behavior. In the sixties the hackers at MIT became known for a spirit of exploration as the virtual world became an emergent reality on mainframes. Then media skewed the image of hackers toward the criminal misfit and forced the distinction between hackers and crackers, those who use hacking skills to cause damage or steal secrets. Hackers are fighting a battle they may have already lost to save their name.

If the best hackers are not hanging porno on government web sites, what ARE they doing? Where is the „redeeming social value” in all this?

First, many who make their living in computer security, military and civilian intelligence, and law enforcement learned their craft as hackers or hire hackers.

Secondly, hackers provide value for the computer industry by identifying bugs and security holes. Many software companies count on hackers to work free to locate holes in their applications. What else is a beta version? Why else do manufacturers of firewalls offer cash to penetrate their systems?

Yobie Benjamin, working with cohorts from the l0pht and the DoC group, discovered several serious holes in Windows NT 4.0, not the least of which was the ability to steal passwords in an entire NT domain and capture all the traffic in an NT network.

Unlike criminals intent on exploiting these flaws, their exploits were shared with Microsoft and the public.

„The only thing the public knows about hackers is how they defaced some web page or crashed a server,” says Modify. „They never hear about the hacker that emails an administrator about the holes in his security or fixes security breeches for a system administrator.”

Third, hackers engage in wide-ranging projects that have great promise for future applications. Yobie Benjamin identifies the essence of hacking as trailblazing.

„Take the challenge of parallel processing,” he says. „Every day, there are thousands of computers sitting idle while projects that could use their power or schools that don’t have access to networks sit idly by. We’re exploring ways to link those computers, align that processor power for parallel processing.”

Benjamin is also fascinated by applying the command-and- control model to the current multiplicity of digital interfaces to assist the convergence of electronic appliances and software applications into a single networked entity.

„I took apart one of my remotes, rewired it and plugged it into a parallel port so I could program my VCR over the Internet.

„Now, why,” he continued, „shouldn’t all of the arbitrary devices that constitute digital interfaces be linked in the same way? Why not develop an application for power companies, for example, as they bundle products in a deregulated environment?”

Benjamin is committed to developing applications that empower people to build their own virtual spaces, enabling them to interoperate and intercommunicate through an infrastructure that already exists. Benjamin’s vision is a world of consumers able to control their own futures in cyberspace.

The Hacker’s Code is an affirmation of life itself, life that wants to know, and grow, and extend itself.

Hackers are threatening because they live like spies, appearing to play by the rules but given secret sanction to break them. Sanction comes not from a central government, however, but from the facts of paradigm change, hierarchical restructuring, and exponential change itself. The evolution of a single global economy mandates that every business behave as if it’s an independent country. Every enterprise must manage its proprietary data and master the craft of intelligence and disinformation. Information is currency, and those who know how to get it and integrate it into meaningful patterns are the new Masters of the Universe.

The skills of hackers — a love of adventure and risk, a toleration of ambiguity, an ability to synthesize meaning from disparate sources, a commitment to knowledge — are skills needed in the next century. Hackers are the pathfinders of the wilderness called the future toward which the tao is flowing like a river, flowing and branching fractal-like, flowing in the tracks of hackers.

(c) Richard Thieme, akinek ezúttal is köszönjük, hogy felhasználhattuk a cikkét. Az episzkopális egyház lelkészéből lett hacker/cyberkult újságíró lapján még számos érdekességet találhattok, például egy interjút Se7ennel.