Author: Paul A Taylor
ISBN No: 0415180724
Review date: 08/12/2025
No of pages: 216
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Books Ltd
Year of publication: 11/09/1999
Brief:
Paul Taylor is the man who has talked to hackers.
Paul Taylor is the man who has talked to hackers. As a results, his book of the same name. As in many things, there’s no better way to get to grips with a subject than to simply talk to people involved. Taylor, a sociologist at the University of Salford, was interviewed on Radio 4’s Thinking Aloud in January 2001. He did come across as quite sympathetic to hackers, almost putting them on a par with dissatisfied consumers. Taylor hasn’t just spun a tale of hackers, but their enemies at the other end of the cable. He did face-to-face interviews in the UK and the Netherlands, and e-mail interviews across continents. As the stories are woven, we see that it it’s simplistic to say there are two sides of the fence, hackers and computer security defenders. Hackers in the real world are playing a part in testing corporate security. Interestingly, bearing in mind another recent article on this website about ethics, ethical considerations do come into it – should you belong to the computer ‘underground’ even if law enforcers consider hacking to be a criminal offence? And even though the companies you hack into might appreciate your skills so much that they offer you a job (and maybe set you to hacking into a business rival?). Other diehard hackers may see their work as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’.
Taylor thinks that we are all suffering from incomprehension of the profound current technological changes – which might not be the first thing on the mind of an IT security manager having to devote much time of his own and staff, time that they hardly have to spray around, on repairing hacker graffiti. Many hackers are bright and funny, albeit computer-obsessed, who cannot resist looking on the other side of a door – even if it is locked (how do you define locked in computer terms?) One hacker for instance defends the way he (it’s usually a he) was hacking into telephone systems to get free phone calls and internet access: ‘the lines are already in place, and the electrons don’t care how far they travel’. You may well find Taylor’s a dry, academic account, or you might find the direct quotes highly entertaining, but you cannot beat a story as well sourced as this. There are different kinds of hackers, it’s true – some are more or less young investigative journalists, others carrying out the high-tech equivalent of tribal rituals to show off their manhood. Taylor argues that the world needs a middle way if we are to make the most of meddling hackers – but this reviewer thinks you shouldn’t hold your breath for an improvement. Hackers are people and they have a culture – to learn more, either spend many, many hours at your keyboard or read this.
