A Synergistic Symposium for the Cybernetic Age
HaX0r
[CONNECTED 15,600]
Before eleven (which is to say, before most people at HOPE even woke up), free access was aplenty. By 12:00, a DDOS is in effect (distributed denial of service), preventing access to the temporary networks set up here. I can’t get online. I can’t even register to be tracked by my RFID tag. What do you expect, I guess, when you put a few thousand hackers in a room? I’ll post whenever I get a moment of connection.
Today I’m in NYC at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) con, being run by the gang at 2600. The Hotel Pennsylvania is a-buzz with computer geeks in black t-shirts that say things such as “I Hack Therefore I am,” or “The Singularity Is Near” (myself among them, sans the black, and sans most of the expertise). It’s abuzz, too, with the low hum of endless power strips, countless servers, and soldering irons against open circuit boards. Blue boxes and phreak phones, some looking very much like early-60s relics, are for sale. I’m sitting next to a guy from The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL) as I type. Across the room, people are thumbing through Emmanuel Goldstein's _The Best of 2600_.
Speakers are jabbering away in each of the three main presentation rooms – Hopper, Turing and Engressia – all named for the bigwigs of computer-programming and -science history. I’m taking an hour off from talks, which start daily at 10:00 and run until midnight each night, to try to check email and post about what’s going on. My travel companion, the illustrious SPope, is at a talk called “Citizen Engineer: Consumer Electronics Hacking and Open Source Hardware.” He’ll catch me up on the topic later. I’m holding out for “Evil Interfaces: Violating the User,” a talk being given by Professor Greg Conti of the US Military Academy. We both plan to watch our old friend, the once infamous, now famous, Gweedz (a.k.a. Guido Sanchez) at 5:00 (“Kitchen Hack Lab: Interactive Food Disassembly”).
My interests here are primarily historical-educational, while SPope is seeking out current issues. Between the two of us, we’re hoping to cover most of the talk-bases.
In addition to the above-mentioned talks, other highlights (for me) today include:
3:00 – “Monumental Women Who Influenced Today’s Technology” or “Wikipedia: You Will Never Find A More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villiany” (tough call!)
7:00 – “Hacking the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer: Dispatches from the Field of Educational Technology”
8:00 – “One Last Time: The Hack/Phreak History Primer”
10:00 – “Dirty New Media: Art, Activism and Computer Counter Cultures”
Tomorrow is full of (more) new media installation art, phreak history, and talk about robotics and the singularity.
More soon! (I'll add links later, as well as my RFID info. if anyone wants to track my movements around the Con and the city. . . not that they do, but just in case. ;o)
[NO CARRIER]
Before eleven (which is to say, before most people at HOPE even woke up), free access was aplenty. By 12:00, a DDOS is in effect (distributed denial of service), preventing access to the temporary networks set up here. I can’t get online. I can’t even register to be tracked by my RFID tag. What do you expect, I guess, when you put a few thousand hackers in a room? I’ll post whenever I get a moment of connection.
Today I’m in NYC at HOPE (Hackers on Planet Earth) con, being run by the gang at 2600. The Hotel Pennsylvania is a-buzz with computer geeks in black t-shirts that say things such as “I Hack Therefore I am,” or “The Singularity Is Near” (myself among them, sans the black, and sans most of the expertise). It’s abuzz, too, with the low hum of endless power strips, countless servers, and soldering irons against open circuit boards. Blue boxes and phreak phones, some looking very much like early-60s relics, are for sale. I’m sitting next to a guy from The Open Organization of Lockpickers (TOOOL) as I type. Across the room, people are thumbing through Emmanuel Goldstein's _The Best of 2600_.
Speakers are jabbering away in each of the three main presentation rooms – Hopper, Turing and Engressia – all named for the bigwigs of computer-programming and -science history. I’m taking an hour off from talks, which start daily at 10:00 and run until midnight each night, to try to check email and post about what’s going on. My travel companion, the illustrious SPope, is at a talk called “Citizen Engineer: Consumer Electronics Hacking and Open Source Hardware.” He’ll catch me up on the topic later. I’m holding out for “Evil Interfaces: Violating the User,” a talk being given by Professor Greg Conti of the US Military Academy. We both plan to watch our old friend, the once infamous, now famous, Gweedz (a.k.a. Guido Sanchez) at 5:00 (“Kitchen Hack Lab: Interactive Food Disassembly”).
My interests here are primarily historical-educational, while SPope is seeking out current issues. Between the two of us, we’re hoping to cover most of the talk-bases.
In addition to the above-mentioned talks, other highlights (for me) today include:
3:00 – “Monumental Women Who Influenced Today’s Technology” or “Wikipedia: You Will Never Find A More Wretched Hive of Scum and Villiany” (tough call!)
7:00 – “Hacking the Young Lady’s Illustrated Primer: Dispatches from the Field of Educational Technology”
8:00 – “One Last Time: The Hack/Phreak History Primer”
10:00 – “Dirty New Media: Art, Activism and Computer Counter Cultures”
Tomorrow is full of (more) new media installation art, phreak history, and talk about robotics and the singularity.
More soon! (I'll add links later, as well as my RFID info. if anyone wants to track my movements around the Con and the city. . . not that they do, but just in case. ;o)
[NO CARRIER]
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