The cowboy has always served as a potent American myth of individuality and survivalism in the face of a harsh and lawless frontier. It is no accident that William Gibson chose cowboy metaphors for his groundbreaking cyberpunk novel Neuromancer (1984). Case and the other "console cowboys" in the novel ride a cybernetic range as data rustlers for hire, ultimately sad and alone in their harsh nomadic world. They are both loner heroes and bad assed predators of the law abiding cyber citizenry they burn in their wake.
I don't think I need to tell readers here what impact Gibson's fictional world has had on fueling hacker fan-tasies or what potent similarities exist between Gibson's world and our own.
I don't think I need to tell readers here what impact Gibson's fictional world has had on fueling hacker fan-tasies or what potent similarities exist between Gibson's world and our own.
Like the cowboy tales of the wild west, the myth of the hacker as cowboy is undoubtedly more image over substance (as are most of the myths we will explore here), but there are some important kernels of truth: a) hackers are often loners, b) there are many nomadic and mercenary aspects to the burgeoning cyberspace of
the 1990s, and c) it is a wide open and lawless territory where the distinctions between good and bad, following the law and forging a new one, and issues of free access and property rights are all up for grabs (remember the Indians?). Not surprisingly, Electronic Frontier Foundation co-founder John Perry Barlow (a
Wyoming cattle rancher himself) chose frontier metaphors when he wrote his landmark essay "Crime and Puzzlement" (Whole Earth Review, Fall 1990). The first section of this lengthy essay, that lead to the birth of the EFF was entitled, "Desperadoes of the DataSphere."
