Much of our day to day life is influenced by the presence of “the hacker” in often subtle, but powerful ways. The networks of today are what they are because the hacks of yesterday and the fear of the hacks of the future. Patches are constantly rolled out. User populations are constantly trained. New protocols are constantly developed. Yet even with all this prevention the hacker still proliferates, in the news there is a never ending parade of big name companies falling victim to the hacker. Meanwhile, the hacker lives a second life in the popular imagination. Heroic and/or villainous…
Author: Chris
Chris
Chris Turpin has been fascinated for computers as long as he can remember. He studies the rhetoric of cybersecurity, hackers and hacking, and experimental digital media forms.
In my teens I dropped out of high school and got involved in the hacktivism scene. I did a lot of stuff during this time, but the thing that probably says the most about me is an art project called “Anonymous vs. Art.” In this project I used some half-borrowed, half-handwritten software to temporarily knock the websites of a few of the world’s largest – and most problematic – art galleries offline (the Tate, the Met, etc). The idea of the art project was that the medium is the message, but in hyperdrive; the internet can be a container of…