Kevin Gotkin, Rachel Ward*
New York University
Full Paper: http://www.kon.org/urc/v9/gotkin.html
“This is our world now . . . the world of the electron and the switch, the beauty of the baud.”
-The Mentor
Introduction: Shortly after his arrest in 1986, “The Mentor” wrote a short piece for the American hacker e-zine, Phrack, entitled “The Conscience of a Hacker.” We can only assume the writer is a man because his penname masks everything about his true identity, including the arrest that apparently led him to write the article. In the piece, he tells stories of his childhood, of discovering the computer, and of reading newspaper articles about amateur hackers getting arrested. The piece is very short with only a handful of paragraphs that barely stretch to a second printed page, but at the end of each paragraph he repeats five words taken from the admonishing voices he hears all around: “Damn kids. They’re all alike” (1). Through his piece, The Mentor allows us a glimpse into some of the most personal parts of a hacker’s mind.