The Hacker's Manifesto, Original

   Another one got caught today, it's all over the papers. "Teenager
   Arrested in Computer Crime Scandal", "Hacker Arrested After Bank
   Tampering"...Damn kids. They're all alike. But did you, in your
   three-piece psychology and 1950's technobrain, ever take a look
   behind the eyes of a Hacker? Did you ever wonder what made him tick,
   what forces shaped him, what may have molded him?

   I am a Hacker, enter my world... Mine is a world that begins with
   School... I'm smarter than most of the other kids, this crap they
   teach us bores me... Damn underachiever. They're all alike. I'm in
   Junior High or High School. I've listened to Teachers explain for
   the fifteenth time how to reduce a fraction. I understand it. "No
   Ms. Smith, I didn't show my work, I did it in my head..." Damn kid,
   probably copied it. They're all alike.

   I made a discovery today. I found a computer. Wait a second, this is
   cool. It does what I want it to. If it makes a mistake, it's because
   I screwed up. Not because it doesn't like me...Or feels threatened
   by me... Or thinks I'm a smart ass... Or doesn't like teaching and
   shouldn't be here...

   Damn kid. All he does is play games. They're all alike. And then it
   happened... A door opened to a world... rushing through the phone
   line like heroin through an addicts veins, an electronic pulse is
   sent out, a refuge from the day-to-day incompetencies is sought... a
   board is found. "This is it, this is where I belong..." I know
   everyone here, even if I've never met them, never talked to them,
   may never hear from them again... I know you all.

   Damn kid, tying up the phone line again. They're all alike... You
   bet your ass we're all alike...

   We've been spoon-fed baby food at School when we hungered for
   steak... the bits of meat that you did let slip through were
   pre-chewed and tasteless. We've been dominated by sadists, or
   ignored by the apathetic. The few that had something to teach found
   us willing pupils, but those few are like drops of water in the
   desert.

   This is our world now, the world of the electron and the switch, the
   beauty of the baud. We make use of a service already existing
   without paying for what could be dirt-cheap if it wasn't run by
   profiteering gluttons, and you call us Criminals. We seek after
   knowledge, and you call us Criminals.

   We exist without skin colour, without nationality, without religious
   bias... and you call us Criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage
   wars, you murder, cheat and lie to us, and try and make us believe
   it's for our own good, yet we're the Criminals.

   Yes I am a Criminal, my crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that
   of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look
   like. My crime is that of outsmarting you, something that you will
   never forgive me for.

   I am a Hacker, this is my Manifesto. You may stop the individual,
   but you can't stop us all. After all, we're all alike.

   The Mentor