es
will earn you the sustained attention of the federal Bureau of Alcohol,
Tobacco and Firearms.

Some people, however, will actually try these plans. A determinedly
murderous American teenager can probably buy or steal a handgun far
more easily than he can brew fake "napalm" in the kitchen sink.
Nevertheless, if temptation is spread before people, a certain number
will succumb, and a small minority will actually attempt these stunts.
A large minority of that small minority will either fail or, quite
likely, maim themselves, since these "philes" have not been checked for
accuracy, are not the product of professional experience, and are often
highly fanciful. But the gloating menace of these philes is not to be
entirely dismissed.

Hackers may not be "serious" about bombing; if they were, we would hear
far more about exploding flashlights, homemade bazookas, and gym
teachers poisoned by chlorine and potassium. However, hackers are VERY
serious about forbidden knowledge. They are possessed not merely by
curiosity, but by a positive LUST TO KNOW. The desire to know what
others don't is scarcely new. But the INTENSITY of this desire, as
manifested by these young technophilic denizens of the Information Age,
may in fact BE new, and may represent some basic shift in social
values--a harbinger of what the world may come to, as society lays more
and more value on the possession, assimilation and retailing of
INFORMATION as a basic commodity of daily life.

There have always been young men with obsessive interests in these
topics. Never before, however, have they been able to network so
extensively and easily, and to propagandize their interests with
impunity to random passers-by. High-school teachers will recognize
that there's always one in a crowd, but when the one in a crowd escapes
control by jumping into the phone-lines, and becomes a hundred such
kids all together on a board, then trouble is brewing visibly. The
urge of authority to DO SOMETHING, even something drastic, is hard to
resist. And in 1990, authority did something. In fact authority did a
great deal.

#

The process by which boards create hackers goes something like this. A
youngster becomes interested in computers--usually, computer games. He
hears from friends that "bulletin boards" exist where games can be
obtained for free. (Many computer games are "freeware," not
copyrighted--invented simply for the love of it and given away to the
publ