one with some stolen codes to hand. You dither
a while, knowing this isn't quite right, then you make up your mind to
try them anyhow--AND THEY WORK! Suddenly you're doing something even
your parents can't do. Six months ago you were just some kid--now,
you're the Crimson Flash of Area Code 512! You're bad--you're
nationwide!

Maybe you'll stop at a few abused codes. Maybe you'll decide that
boards aren't all that interesting after all, that it's wrong, not
worth the risk --but maybe you won't. The next step is to pick up your
own repeat-dialling program--to learn to generate your own stolen
codes. (This was dead easy five years ago, much harder to get away
with nowadays, but not yet impossible.) And these dialling programs are
not complex or intimidating--some are as small as twenty lines of
software.

Now, you too can share codes. You can trade codes to learn other
techniques. If you're smart enough to catch on, and obsessive enough
to want to bother, and ruthless enough to start seriously bending
rules, then you'll get better, fast. You start to develop a rep. You
move up to a heavier class of board--a board with a bad attitude, the
kind of board that naive dopes like your classmates and your former
self have never even heard of! You pick up the jargon of phreaking and
hacking from the board. You read a few of those anarchy philes--and
man, you never realized you could be a real OUTLAW without ever leaving
your bedroom.

You still play other computer games, but now you have a new and bigger
game. This one will bring you a different kind of status than
destroying even eight zillion lousy space invaders.

Hacking is perceived by hackers as a "game." This is not an entirely
unreasonable or sociopathic perception. You can win or lose at
hacking, succeed or fail, but it never feels "real." It's not simply
that imaginative youngsters sometimes have a hard time telling
"make-believe" from "real life." Cyberspace is NOT REAL! "Real"
things are physical objects like trees and shoes and cars. Hacking
takes place on a screen. Words aren't physical, numbers (even
telephone numbers and credit card numbers) aren't physical. Sticks and
stones may break my bones, but data will never hurt me. Computers
SIMULATE reality, like computer games that simulate tank battles or
dogfights or spaceships. Simulations are just make-believe, and the
stuff in computers is NOT REAL.

Consider this: if "hacking" is sup