Underground: Tales of Hacking, Madness and Obsession from the Electronic Frontier by Suelette Dreyfus
Authors: Suelette Dreyfus
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weight of pubescent hormonal changes. A boy pining for the affections of the girl who dumped him or, worse, didn’t even know he existed. Teenagers who contemplated suicide. The messages were completely anonymous, readers didn’t even know the authors’
handles, and that anonymous setting allowed heart-felt messages and genuine responses.
Zen was PI’s sophisticated younger sister. Within two years of PI making its debut, Bowen opened up Zen, one of the first Australian BBSes with more than one telephone line. The main reason he set up Zen was to stop his computer users from bothering him all the time. When someone logged into PI, one of the first things he or she did was request an on-line chat with the system operator. PI’s Apple IIe was such a basic machine by today’s standards, Bowen couldn’t multi-task on it. He could not do anything with the machine, such as check his own mail, while a visitor was logged into PI.
Zen was a watershed in the Australian BBS community. Zen multi-tasked.
Up to four people could ring up and login to the machine at any one time, and Bowen could do his own thing while his users were on-line.
Better still, his users could talk request each other instead of hassling him all the time. Having users on a multi-tasking machine with multiple phone lines was like having a gaggle of children. For the most part, they amused each other.
Mainstream and respectful of authority on the surface, Bowen possessed the same streak of anti-establishment views harboured by many in the underground. His choice of name for Zen underlined this. Zen came from the futuristic British TV science fiction series ‘Blake 7’, in which a bunch of underfunded rebels attempted to overthrow an evil totalitarian government. Zen was the computer on the rebels’ ship. The rebels banded together after meeting on a prison ship; they were all being transported to a penal settlement on another planet. It was a story people in the Australian underground could relate to. One of the lead characters, a sort of heroic anti-hero, had been sentenced to prison for computer hacking. His big mistake, he told fellow rebels, was that he had relied on other people. He trusted them. He should have worked alone.
Craig Bowen had no idea of how true that sentiment would ring in a matter of months.
Bowen’s place was a hub of current and future lights in the computer underground. The Wizard. The Force. Powerspike. Phoenix. Electron.
Nom. Prime Suspect. Mendax. Train Trax. Some, such as Prime Suspect, merely passed through, occasionally stopping in to check out the
action and greet friends. Others, such as Nom, were part of the
close-knit PI family. Nom helped Bowen set up PI. Like many early members of the underground, they met through AUSOM, an Apple users’
society in Melbourne. Bowen wanted to run ASCII Express, a program which allowed people to transfer files between their own computers and PI. But, as usual, he and everyone he knew only had a pirated copy of the program. No manuals. So Nom and Bowen spent one weekend picking apart the program by themselves. They were each at home, on their own machines, with copies. They sat on the phone for hours working through how the program worked. They wrote their own manual for other people in the underground suffering under the same lack of documentation.
Then they got it up and running on PI.
Making your way into the various groups in a BBS such as PI or Zen had benefits besides hacking information. If you wanted to drop your mantle of anonymity, you could join a pre-packaged, close-knit circle of friends. For example, one clique of PI people were fanatical followers of the film The Blues Brothers. Every Friday night, this group dressed up in Blues Brothers costumes of a dark suit, white shirt, narrow tie, Rayban sunglasses and, of course, the snap-brimmed hat. One couple brought their child, dressed as a mini-Blues Brother.
The group of Friday night regulars made their way
handles, and that anonymous setting allowed heart-felt messages and genuine responses.
Zen was PI’s sophisticated younger sister. Within two years of PI making its debut, Bowen opened up Zen, one of the first Australian BBSes with more than one telephone line. The main reason he set up Zen was to stop his computer users from bothering him all the time. When someone logged into PI, one of the first things he or she did was request an on-line chat with the system operator. PI’s Apple IIe was such a basic machine by today’s standards, Bowen couldn’t multi-task on it. He could not do anything with the machine, such as check his own mail, while a visitor was logged into PI.
Zen was a watershed in the Australian BBS community. Zen multi-tasked.
Up to four people could ring up and login to the machine at any one time, and Bowen could do his own thing while his users were on-line.
Better still, his users could talk request each other instead of hassling him all the time. Having users on a multi-tasking machine with multiple phone lines was like having a gaggle of children. For the most part, they amused each other.
Mainstream and respectful of authority on the surface, Bowen possessed the same streak of anti-establishment views harboured by many in the underground. His choice of name for Zen underlined this. Zen came from the futuristic British TV science fiction series ‘Blake 7’, in which a bunch of underfunded rebels attempted to overthrow an evil totalitarian government. Zen was the computer on the rebels’ ship. The rebels banded together after meeting on a prison ship; they were all being transported to a penal settlement on another planet. It was a story people in the Australian underground could relate to. One of the lead characters, a sort of heroic anti-hero, had been sentenced to prison for computer hacking. His big mistake, he told fellow rebels, was that he had relied on other people. He trusted them. He should have worked alone.
Craig Bowen had no idea of how true that sentiment would ring in a matter of months.
Bowen’s place was a hub of current and future lights in the computer underground. The Wizard. The Force. Powerspike. Phoenix. Electron.
Nom. Prime Suspect. Mendax. Train Trax. Some, such as Prime Suspect, merely passed through, occasionally stopping in to check out the
action and greet friends. Others, such as Nom, were part of the
close-knit PI family. Nom helped Bowen set up PI. Like many early members of the underground, they met through AUSOM, an Apple users’
society in Melbourne. Bowen wanted to run ASCII Express, a program which allowed people to transfer files between their own computers and PI. But, as usual, he and everyone he knew only had a pirated copy of the program. No manuals. So Nom and Bowen spent one weekend picking apart the program by themselves. They were each at home, on their own machines, with copies. They sat on the phone for hours working through how the program worked. They wrote their own manual for other people in the underground suffering under the same lack of documentation.
Then they got it up and running on PI.
Making your way into the various groups in a BBS such as PI or Zen had benefits besides hacking information. If you wanted to drop your mantle of anonymity, you could join a pre-packaged, close-knit circle of friends. For example, one clique of PI people were fanatical followers of the film The Blues Brothers. Every Friday night, this group dressed up in Blues Brothers costumes of a dark suit, white shirt, narrow tie, Rayban sunglasses and, of course, the snap-brimmed hat. One couple brought their child, dressed as a mini-Blues Brother.
The group of Friday night regulars made their way
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