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Subject:  PhD Candidate Seeks information on the CU
From:     P.A. Taylor <EJPA09@uk.ac.edinburgh.emas-a>
Date:     02 Nov 90  15:25:32 gmt

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I'm in the second year of a PhD on the subject of hacking/viruses and the
politics behind them, and I was wondering whether any of you are prepared to
enter into a dialogue on the subject.
At the moment, I'm preparing the theory section and literature review. In
January or thereabouts I want to start field-work (or modem-work, if it
turns out that way) with both hackers and their computer security industry
counterparts, and anyone who would consider themselves neither one nor the
other, but nevertheless interested in the field and the issues raised by it.
Theoretically, so far I've concentrated on the notion put forward in various
quarters that hackers are surfers on a technological wave that is carrying
the rest of us away, or in a similar vein, cowboys staking out new territory
in the new frontier world of computer technology. Looking at hackers in
this way has made me concentrate on the whole issue of technological
determinism and the "information revolution" and also the idea of hackers
being perhaps an extension or most recent development of an alternative
culture, hippies with modems perhaps. It also raises the whole issue of the
exact nature of cyberspace and the implications it holds... are we entering
a new realm of informational colonialism? What is information? Who has rights
over it, and are hackers/the computer underground fighting a battle of
principle the importance of which has passed most people by?
On a more practical level I'm interested in the following points...
1. To what extent has the advent of hacking/viruses fed back into
and affected the development of computer science? (e.g. the conceptualisation
of genetic algorithms)

2. Information and reference material relating to the formation of the
computer security industry. Ideally I'd like to write a short history of it
and trace the ways in which it has developed and been shaped by its
adversarial relationship with the computer industry.

3. The subject of the changing nature of information illustrated by
such episodes as the "look and feel lawsuits" and an increasingly
proprietal attitude towards information that is now evident. To what
extent are hackers/computer underground concerned with the type of
opposition to information control that people such as Richard Stallman
and his Gnu project represent?

Thanks for taking the time to read all this,and hopefully some of you
can give me feedback/suggestions/reference material.

Cheers, P.A.T.

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