mediated history

I decided to look up a popular  hacker, “Captain Crunch”, or John Draper,  famous for creating machines that emit  2600 hertz frequencies used to hack AT&T Phone lines.  The article first started getting attention in June, 2006, with the last update in July 2011.

The talk page is pretty straight forward, as a “hacker icon” people want to add his personal stories and exploits, as well as his character traits that are “out of the ordinary.”  The fact that he lives out of his car, and his strong moral codes for hacking and phreaking, are left out because they don’t meet the quality standards of Wikipedia.  One guy is pretty upset about that.  People vandalize the page by changing his name from John draper to  John Derper from time to time. Most of the discussion and edits are  about rumors or affairs he was in that people think are important but are removed, like if he is currently dating a supermodel named Karin who did a podcast with him.

The given links are the most interesting points, many of them are from outdated hacker forums and databases.  The first two are pretty good, from a TLC documentary on Hackers (that Wikipedia has for download, which is really cool) and books written by other apple employees who were into hacking and phone phreaking.  The hacker material that this page sources, I can;t vouch for the authority of them.  They seem like a really personal, closely knit group, and it;s hard to say if these sources are accurate or made to increase the celebrity of the people they highlight.

~ by aledere1 on September 20, 2012 .