Bruce Sterling's The Hacker Crackdown is, by now, certainly showing its age, but it's still a good, reasonably intelligent look at the hacker culture of the late 80s/early 90s as it related to the famous AT&T crash of 1990 and the bygone days of phone phreaking.
I was reminded of your research, Rob, in the first chapter when Sterling is describing all the weirdness and screw-ups in the early phone system of the 20s and 30s. Apparently Ma Bell -- perhaps likening the new job of "operator" to that of "paperboy" -- originally hired only teenage boys to work in their switching stations. Until, that is, the precocious little proto-hackers started screwing around with the circuitry.
I guess that was how Bell first discovered that boys + technology = trouble.
no subject
I was reminded of your research, Rob, in the first chapter when Sterling is describing all the weirdness and screw-ups in the early phone system of the 20s and 30s. Apparently Ma Bell -- perhaps likening the new job of "operator" to that of "paperboy" -- originally hired only teenage boys to work in their switching stations. Until, that is, the precocious little proto-hackers started screwing around with the circuitry.
I guess that was how Bell first discovered that boys + technology = trouble.
-- S