Unfortunately, the youth of today are increasingly dabbling in this life of crime. So how do you know if your son is a computer hacker? Dr. Reginald Gibbons provides an informative guide:
- Has your son asked you to change ISPs? "Most American families use trusted and responsible Internet Service Providers, such as AOL. These providers have a strict "No Hacking" policy, and take careful measures to ensure that your internet experience is enjoyable, educational and above all legal. If your child is becoming a hacker, one of his first steps will be to request a change to a more hacker friendly provider."
- Are you finding programs on your computer that you don't remember installing? "Popular hacker software includes 'Comet Cursor', 'Bonzi Buddy' and 'Flash'."
- Has your child asked for new hardware? "If your son has requested a new "processor" from a company called "AMD", this is genuine cause for alarm."
- Does your child read hacking manuals? "A few titles to be on the lookout for are: "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" by Neal Stephenson; "Neuromancer" by William Gibson; "Programming with Perl" by Timothy O'Reilly; "Geeks" by Jon Katz; "The Hacker Crackdown" by Bruce Sterling; "Microserfs" by Douglas Coupland; "Hackers" by Steven Levy; and "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond."
- How much time does your child spend using the computer each day? "If your son spends more than thirty minutes each day on the computer, he may be using it to DOS other peoples sites."
Many of Caplan's Internet affordances play a role in encouraging these young anarchists
- Greater anonymity -- Does your child use a password to protect his email? If so, what is he hiding from you? These young anarchists use anonymity to cover their tracks.
- Greater control over self-presentation -- Does your child use services such as Facebook or MySpace? If so, you have already failed at being a parent.
- Less perceived social risk -- Peer group is the biggest mediating variable on behavior. If your kid's best friend is named AcidBurnz, your kid is going to prison.
- Less social responsibility -- This really goes without saying.
The model of Davis, Flett, and Besser also provides an excellent model for understanding these troubled youth. The typical child-hacker almost certainly faces diminished impulse control, depression, and lack of social comfort. If your child displays any of the tendencies above, they are almost certainly violating some form of international law and unless immediate intervention is taken this may devolve into a life of crime.
5 comments:
Gah, I hate Comet Cursor.
So why can't your daughter be a hacker? Girls use Linux, too.
I'd even go as far as to say that Linux itself leads to PUI - individuals who run a distro probably shy away from associating with Windows users. This will create a preference for CMC, so the users can more easily connect to the 14 other people in the world who use Linux. This loop will intensify, since the rest of their time will be spent in Linux forums just trying to get the darn thing to work.
I don't know if I can add any insightful comments but this was a fantastic post and one of the funniest things i've read all year.
Snow Crash? E-mail passwords? FLASH? I think I've been hacked.
I wouldn’t be so sure that the lonely, depressed, and socially inept are the only kind of hackers around. In high school, I used to be one of the few “computer kids” in my grade who people would go to for computer assistance. Some of my friends (who, quite frankly, held much more involved social lives than I did at the time) liked to ask me to teach them “how to hack.” Admittedly, they were probably half-joking – but this just goes to show that hacking ability appeals to a much broader population than your stereotypical closet geek. In fact, it wouldn’t be surprising if most of the computer criminals who get caught were relatively inexperienced “hackers,” unable to cover their tracks thoroughly.
Great post and analysis. It’s well tied back to the text. What I find interesting would be to consider how people who perceive themselves as not lonely or depressed use Facebook and whether that may lead to PIU. I mention this because I know of quite a few people, who I’m pretty sure would not describe themselves as lonely and depressed, complain about wasting hours of time on Facebook. Now I understand that lonely people may do it more often, but a problem is a problem. What drives us to want to know the basic changing details of friends or whether they wrote 8 words on someone’s wall? Personally I’ve kind of fallen out of Facebook. My profile is still there but I rarely check it. Would you think Facebook’s popularity will taper off at some point, will people be overloading on imformation?
Post a Comment