The Hacker as U.S. Cavalry

just as Hollywood movies raised the lowly dirt-lickin' cowboy to mythic status, it is now pre-senting hackers as a tech-mounted U.S. Cavalry, a cyberpunk version of Mighty Mouse, here to save the day - and save the movie - in the final seconds. Movies such as WarGames, Sneakers, Jurassic Park, and TV shows such as Max Headroom glamorize hackers, often portraying them as misguided geniuses who finally see the light and prevent calamities they're often responsible for in-itiating. At the same time that the mainstream me-dia has demonized hackers, Hollywood has ro-manticized them. John Badham's 1983 film WarGames probably did more to stimulate interest in hacking and phone phreaking among young people than anything before or since. Numerous legendary hackers have credited that film as their chief inspiration and raison d'etre. All these films have also played into the myth of the evil govern-ment and megacorps who deserve the harassment that the hacker protagonists dish out. As this intro-duction is being written, rumors are flying fast and furious that a number of near-future hacker/cyberpunk TV shows are in the works. It will be very interesting to see how Hollywood con-tinues to re-invent the hacker.