[Air-L] the growth of some groups and not others

Denise N. Rall denrall at yahoo.com
Fri Jan 2 14:45:55 PST 2009


Dear AIR-ers -

As I recall the early days of BBSs, there were clearly communities - intersecting and overlapping. But some of the most 'valued' activity - sharing passwords,, breaking servers, etc. was covert or even illegal (not me of course). Those who were REALLY in the loop even had phone numbers of other crackers that were used quite sparingly. But it was a clear sign of 'arrival' or status in the covert community that one had acquired voice access to another member - as some things clearly could not be sent by email - despite interesting encryption programs available. Also, hackers could be directed to a site to use a specific comm protocol that was not generally available to others.

So there were levels of access that happened offline -

How the illegals interacted with others was pretty standard. They didn't pass on details about your activities except to those in the loop - 

At one point we thought of making a "Hacker Hero's" calendar - with a short bio and pic of each hacker and why they were 'heroic' - mostly to do with circumventing various systems. Naturally it couldn't be done. fun idea though! 

Cheers, Denise



Denise N. Rall, PhD. Internationalisation Project Officer Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Office: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 Mobile 0438 233 344 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/esm/staff/pages/drall/ Presenter, Internet Research 9.0, 15-18 October 2008, Copenhagen, DK



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