Here are a few snapshots from my snowman that I built in SecondLife! I'm going to make him a family soon!

For my hacker art project, I will be hacking into the art of baking. I have always been interested in creating and making new things to eat while also making them taste delicious! I am planning on incorporating key ideas from the lectures and readings such as a “PMOG pie,” “computer cupcakes,” and “justice juice.” There may be more than just three items, but these will be the main three. I will try to also incorporate Scratch, the Yes Men, and other key ideas of hacking. I will also create “brain food” which consists of a jiggly brain made from gelatin as well as lollipops in the shape of brains and chocolate brain molds.
    Each piece of food will have something particular done to it to either enhance the way it tastes or change the way it looks. For example, the “justice juice” will be altered so it will have different colored tints to the juice. This reflects the fact that hacking changes the way you look at things and that each time it is different. It also goes back to the hacker ethic and how the information is free for anyone to receive (or drink). For the “PMOG pie,” I will create a pie (not sure of the flavor yet) that has items hidden inside that the consumer may or may not find. This corresponds to the hacker idea of PMOG on the Internet where, when you play the game, you find different websites and missions to accomplish.
    It will definitely be interesting to see how each subproject will turn out when all is said and created. As far as the presentation of each creation, they will be placed “buffet style” in an appealing and temping manner to keep you interested and curious about what each food item possesses. Sounds just as tempting as an unhacked computer!

I have been playing around with the Second Life program, and I feel as though it is a weird version of Sims Online. I have not played the Sims Online, but I know the overall aspect of it. Second Life really just makes me frustrated and angry when I try to explore or do new things. At one point, I accidentally told my character to take off his shoes and I couldn't find a way to put them back on! The creation of your own person is very elaborate and interesting though. I really liked playing around with the different features and ways to make your character look completely unique. When I play Second Life, I feel overwhelmed by the screen and all of the buttons and actions. I do like the fact that you can fly in the game, but I can never get my character to land properly! He always falls short of where I want him to be!
I am further getting frustrated with the gliches in this game. Doors keep disappearing, I can't see what is in front of me, and my character continues to think he is falling down stairs. Not to mention he walks really really slow!
All in all, this game is very conceptually developed and complex in that you can create your own objects and move around to interact with other people. However, the actual game play needs improving. It is definitely a simulation for people who have a lot of time on their hands and are interested in random chat with someone that they have never met before. It is interesting, but not a game for me.

scratch.mit.edu/projects/thebinz/479892

Here is a link to the amazing Harry Potter Adventure! Please enjoy!

Ok so the Scratch project is going a lot better now compared to the last time I tried to work with it. I think I figured out the problem to my frustration. In Adobe Premier, there is a timeline that tells where everything in your project lines up and when it will happen. In Scratch, there is not a timeline. With this, every act that I try to create I have to count the seconds for when the next animation will happen. This gets very frustrating. You also cannot edit your recordings to be shorter. I've also found this annoying. Despite all of this frustration, my project is surprisingly coming along really well! It is very funny and weird and I've already tested the first part of it on my suitemate and she loved it! It is only a third of the way done, but it should be quite amazing when it is finished! Now that I have the flow of the program, the rest of the project should go by faster and with less frustration.
So far, I have Harry Potter and Ron at Hogwarts saying that they are ready to go on an adventure. Dumbledore decides to tag along. Suddenly, a ghost comes out of nowhere so Ron must use a spell to get past him. It is up to the player to decide the correct answer, either type y or n to Ron's question on using Expelliarmus on the ghost. For each answer, a new screen pops up telling you if you're correct or wrong. That is all I have so far. There will be two more questions after that and then the end of the project. I am really excited on how it will turn out!
I have been having fun doing the voices for each character and finding ways to manipulate the program to do what I want it to do. Although it gets ridiculous and complex, the process can still be entertaining when the result is amazing!

The more I play with the Scratch program, the more I get frustrated with it. I think it is because it is so simple that I want to do all of these other effects and I can't do them. I'm so used to using programs such as Adobe Premier, Final Cut Express, and Flash that this program just makes me angry. I have been trying to access the website so I can post projects that I find helpful to my idea, but even the Scratch website has been giving me problems. Every single time I log on it does not load and I have to wait five minutes for each project to load. Anyway, my idea for my project was going to be making a camera simulator, but I found that exact idea on the Scratch website while I was searching for projects to use. This furthered my frustration since I found out my idea had already been used. I then just started searching for other videos and I found one that told a story of a lost child in New York and you have to try to find his way back. This got me thinking of a simulation game. Then it clicked! I want to do a simulation game about Harry Potter! The game will take you through different challenges that were in the story and you will have to choose which spell to cast to get you through! Pretty awesome. I think I might add little bits of trivia after each challenge just to make it more interesting for the player.
I really like the camera idea though. In a lot of the projects I found, it was interesting in all of the different ways the tools can be utilized on the program (even though it still frustrates me terribly).

scratch.mit.edu/projects/Puppies4ever/460366
Here is the link to the camera project. Although I cannot do this idea anymore, I still think that it is a creative simulation that I would like to learn how to achieve. The project even evaluates your picture and how much it is worth!

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/bosox397/466556
This project is about a child trying to escape a classroom without getting caught. This is an idea that I could try to use in my own project by trying to escape from certain dangers during the game.

http://scratch.mit.edu/projects/bigB/105703
Here is a project that is about Quidditch! It is pretty cool that players can manipulate their own wizards on the screen. That would be good to know how to do.

I think I can make my project fun and interesting, I’ll just have to get past the frustrating element.

I think that PMOG (or the Nethernet) is headed in the right direction as far as creating an interactive Internet. It is definitely an innovative and creative idea as far as web surfing is concerned as well as opening up doors (or portals) to information or websites that the player may not have known existed. There are programs such as "Stumble Upon" that take you to random sites, but PMOG rewards you for it. That is why it is so appealing. It feels good to get rewards or to interact with other players to move up in classes or to guess the correct answer on a puzzle crate. The game makes the player look at the Internet in a completely different way while also giving options of how you want to surf the net by offering different types of classes and what they specified for. You can choose to be a kind Benefactor, or an evil Destroyer, and both are perfectly acceptable in the game! It is very convenient to have the toolbar on the top of the screen so random messages will pop up when you've hit something or set a bomb off. It's quite more exciting to go to Google now than it ever was before with tons of missions and mines and portals to encounter.
Although there are many upsides and excitement that goes to playing PMOG, there are also a few flaws. First is the "upgrade" that occurred in the middle of our trial during our class time. That was really frustrating when we had to create our missions and the system was different. The "tubes" get clogged often and this slows down the web surfing experience on PMOG. There was also the issue of putting restrictions on the missions and actually making them more interactive and making sure that the players really read the content in them. This is more of a concern in a learning experience, but nevertheless a flaw in the PMOG system.
All in all, I think PMOG is a great to get people to explore new uses and outlets of the Internet. It gives the players rewards and incentives to create and think more about what they do on the Internet while also having a fun time setting mines and puzzle crates! I'll probably keep playing PMOG because it is fun to receive badges and create missions. I also have a desire to move up to level 7 Pathmaker!

Lyndsey Johnson
First Year Seminar Hackers
Prof. Delwiche
6 March 2009
The Buddhist: The Ultimate Mind Hacker
    Most people view Buddhism as several monks banding together to sit for hours in one room, practicing intricate yoga postures, and worshipping a huge fat jolly figurine by rubbing his belly for good luck. The real Buddha statue resembles nothing of its westernized counterpart. This assumption has skewed the real ideals of Buddhism and has led to many misconceptions about the way a Buddhist lives. Buddhism has existed as the idolized way of living ever since Siddhartha Gautama became the first Buddha, or enlightened one (Boeree). In western civilizations, Buddhism has been seen as a trend to follow or a religion to believe in. Despite all of the assumptions that come with Buddhism, in the modern sense of the word, the role of a Buddhist is not simply just performing devotionals, activating in yogic activities, or remaining calm throughout the day; Buddhism focuses mainly on hacking into your own mind and realizing the world as it exists. Although Buddhism is filled with many layers and beliefs that connect with the way one must exist, this guide aims to delve into the way that Buddhism works to hack into the mind of the follower and how certain aspects of Buddhism function to create the ultimate state of mind. 
   





                                     
       




    When the word “hacking” comes to mind, most likely the mind is not the first object that comes to mind. Usually it would be something along the lines of a computer or computer software, but within the thoughts and ideas of Rudy Harderwijk (2007), the mind as according to Buddhism can be interpreted as being the “computer software” for life (para. 1). In one of her articles, The Mind as our Software, Harderwijk (2007) claimed that, “To illustrate the Buddhist approach to the mind, let us compare our body and mind to a computer. In this simile, the body is the hardware and the mind is the software” (para. 1). This idea helps those who have never heard of the concepts of Buddhism understand where the motivation of the lifestyle is directed. Computer software and the mind work correspondingly in that they both are non-physical and can perceive, think, recognize, experience, and react to the environment (Harderwijk 2007). Harderwijk (2007) emphasized that, “Without software (mind), the hardware (body) is just a ‘dead thing’” (para. 1). Harderwijk (2007) continued to parallel the two phenomena and linking her thoughts to Buddhism when she realized that hardware (for a computer and the body) can both become damaged or ‘die’, “and the software can be moved onto another set of hardware; not unlike rebirth [in Buddhism]” (para.1).
Just as a computer software uses the ‘senses’ of the computer hardware, the mind also must used the ‘senses’ of the body to interpret the outside world (Harderwijk, 2007). It has been emphasized that although computer hardware or the human body has growing limitations, the development of software and the mind have a much less clear limit as to what they can possess (Harderwijk, 2007). Buddhism emphasizes that there “is no real limit to the development of our mind, and in fact [knowing everything] is possible” (Harderwijk, 2007). This is where Buddhism creates its main point of entering a different state of mind that is “beyond limitations, suffering, and problems” (Harderwijk, 2007). Buddhism strives to use methods to develop our mind using the study and practice of meditation and to understand how the “programs” of our mind work and how they can be improved by “reprogramming” them in meditation (Harderwijk, 2007). This is similar to how computer geeks research and know how a computer operates before they begin hacking into it. 
Buddhist meditation is all about working with the mind and reaching an innermost state of being. In Rudy Harderwijk’s (2009) article, “What is Meditation,” she talked more about the specifics of Buddhism and working with the mind through meditation. Buddhism strives to “develop wisdom, learn to observe our own mind, decrease negative mind states, and develop positive mind states” (Harderwijk, 2009). In a sense, one can become their own psychologist by learning how to observe their own mind, decrease negative mind states by understanding where they come from and how to change them to positive energy, and focus on positive thinking by living calm and concentrated (Harderwijk, 2009). Meditation requires clarity in the mind and a focused mental state (Harderwijk, 2009). Observation of our own thoughts need to occur as well as being honest within ourselves instead of getting scatter-brained and lost in our own emotions (Harderwijk, 2009). Ultimately, we need to be patient in order to achieve balance and peacefulness within ourselves (Harderwijk, 2009). Just as an accomplished computer hacker works years developing tactics to hack into computers, the mind also needs time and patience to become successful in meditation.
The act of meditation and its benefits on the mind have further been researched and discussed throughout the world. An organization called Investigating the Mind [ITM] holds an annual Mind and Life public meeting. In 2005, the main topic was “The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation” where speakers and panelists, such as Tibetan leader and Buddhist the Dalai Lama, discussed “the growing interest in meditation within modern medicine and biomedical science that has arisen…” (ITM, 2005). It has been shown that “applications of meditation are not common in the treatment of stress, pain, and a range of chronic diseases in both medicine and psychiatry…” (ITM, 2005). This development has most likely arisen due to the fact that the medical field has realized the way to successfully “hack” into the minds of those who are troubled by applying meditation. Research has gone even further to “investigate the nature of cognition and emotion in the brain as never before, and to begin to explore the interfaces between mind, brain, and body, and the implications of particular forms of meditative practices…” (ITM, 2005). This can “regulate biological pathways to restore or enhance homeostatic processes and perhaps extend the reach of both mind and body in ways that might potentially promote rehabilitation and healing as well as greater overall health and well-being” (ITM, 2005). By observing figure 3, it can be concluded that the assumption that the brain does not think during meditation can be debunked and concluded that activity is in fact occurring during the meditation state. All of this information may sound new and innovative, but it is in fact the same Buddhist ideals of achieving a state of clear-mindedness and greatest potential by means of meditation. It has now been clinically proven and researched that “meditation can result in stable brain patterns and changes over both short and long-term intervals” and can result in positive thinking as well as ways to understand the unification of the brain, mind, and body “that underlie awareness and our capacity for effective adaptation to stressful and uncertain conditions” (ITM, 2005).










Figure 3. Brain Activity During Meditation (n.d.).
Note: Copyright Ellie Crystal, 1995-2009.

    Buddhism may seem like an outlet for relaxation and reflection, but it is in fact a way to delve into the mind and find out what makes the brain functions and why. The core wisdom of Buddhism and meditation is to simply be aware of your surroundings and to simply exist as you are and nothing else. With practice, one can learn to control their own thoughts and feelings so that they will only use the emotions that are deemed necessary and essential for living. In this, everyone can essentially a hacker towards everyday life and learn how to live life to the fullest.


References

Boeree, George. (2000). The Life of Siddhartha Gautama. An Introduction to Buddhism. Retrieved from http://webspace.ship.edu/cgboer/siddhartha.html
Buddha Statue – Chengdu [Online Image]. (2008). Retrieved March 4, 2009, from ringmar.net. http://ringmar.net/toomanymangoes/?p=253ß
Crystal, Ellie (Photographer). (n.d.) [Brain Activity During Meditation], [Online Image]. Retrieved March 5, 2009, from Ellie Crystal’s Home Page. http://www.crystalinks.com/medbrain.html
Harderwijk, Rudy. (2007). Mind and Mental Factors. A View on Buddhism. Retrieved from http://viewonbuddhism.org/mind.html#3
Harderwijk, Rudy. (2009). What is Meditation. A View on Buddhism. Retrieved from http://viewonbuddhism.org/meditation_theory.html
Investigating the Mind [ITM]. (2005) The Science and Clinical Applications of Meditation. Mind and Life Institute. Retrieved from http://www.investigatingthemind.org/
Little Buddha – [Online Image]. (2008). Retrieved March 4, 2009, from blog.stevengfullwood.org. http://blog.stevengfullwood.org/archives/000552.html

Here is a chart of our ideal mission about staying anonymous while existing on the web. Due to the recent change of the "PMOG" site, we're still hoping that our idea of keeping an interactive mission can still be accomplished. It starts out by going to a web page that gives tips and simple advice about staying safe on places such as MySpace and Facebook. These are points such as creating a fake name, city, or vital information that links back to you or changing your security settings so no one can see content you don't want them to. Next, the mission navigates to the page by angelazaharia that we read in class about sending an anonymous email. These first two steps are simply about informing and getting the information to the person doing the mission.

Step three takes person to a blog where they must find a man named "Archibald" and find his email address that he has left in a posting. From here, they will navigate to their email and send him an email anonymously using the tools that we have provided earlier in the mission. The content of the email can be chosen by the person, but we'll advocate a "clean" email! Next we'll give them a link to Facebook where they must find "Archibald" and look at his information. This shows how easy it is for ANYONE to look at your information on the web. They will then have to friend him and take a quiz that is posted on his Facebook wall. This quiz is about the content that we had them read earlier and hopefully they will have to finish the quiz in order to finish the mission.

Our mission aims to help people stay anonymous on the web but also to show how easy it is for anyone to find you and take all of your information. We must certainly be careful when giving out anything about ourselves on the Internet.


 

Here is my awesome mind-jet picture that organized my thoughts about the interview. Enjoy!

Fearing a disease Armageddon? Not sure what to do if you're the last one on Earth? Want to learn how to survive the end of the World as we know it? Then take The Fellowship of the Platypus's PMOG mission "I'm Not Yet Dead" to learn the ways of survival and give you tips and hints for getting through terrible disease! ENJOY!

pmog.com/missions/surviving_armageddon

Everyone in the hackers class can safely say that PMOG has got to be the most addicting assignment that any professor has assigned. PMOG is genius in the fact that it combines the aspects of a game to the everyday task of simply surfing the net. The game is to perform missions, earn badges, buy supplies, create your own missions, and make allies, aquaintences, and enemies. The whole concept is to surf the Internet and try to find points, crates, and missions that seem interesting. There are also your enemies that you need to look out for who can place mines on certain sites along with portals that can lead to other sites. The points and crates that you earn will go towards your spending to buy supplies or tools that you think you might need to defend yourself or to create missions. You can also shield yourself from enemies, attack enemies, chat with other players, send PMail, write on forums, and place portals, lighthouses, or even leave money behind for your allies to find. All in all, this game is very addicting.
One of the main aspects of PMOG is to perform missions. These missions are usually theme based and can take you from one website to another with explanations of each site along with why it can be interesting. Each mission is different and can be ridiculously stupid or really interesting. They have the potential to be very educating to a certain point. If a teacher wanted to teach a class the importance of a piece of literature, then they can create a mission that takes the student to specific websites that analyze the piece and give background information on the author's history or other aspects. To further utilize the tools of the game, the teacher could place mines or conflictual aspects of the game onto sites that they do not want the student to visit. This could keep the student grounded to the sites that they should be visiting. The instructor could even leave a portal which can take the student to other websites that may further their learning on the subject.
It is very interesting that the aspects of this game bring about competition and gaming to some of the users for fun, but PMOG can be used in many other ways as well. Just by simply tackling a few missions, I have already learned a few extra tidbits about the Internet that I would never have found out on my own. In a sense, PMOG brings light to the hacker ethic that everyone playing the game has some sort of information that they want to share with the other users. The missions help everyone to learn the information, but at the same time, competition is at play. It is this competition (just like in real world situations) that keeps the game going and interesting.

Being a person is all about organization and lists, the Mindjet software was simply amazing. There was so much that you can do with that software! You can plan parties, your weekly assignments, marketing strategies, resume, packing lists, and even plan a writing project! It was a lot of fun playing around with the program and trying out new things to do with it. You can change different colors, fonts, sizes, drag different ideas into other sections of the plan... I was so excited that there is an actual program out there for nerdy people like myself who enjoy being organized! You can even add hyperlinks, notes to yourself, files, boundaries to keep parts together, and connect certain areas to each other. This is definitely a good product for those who like to get creative with organizing their thoughts on a computer screen!

The Doctor and Monster
A typical hacker is perceived as being a geeky teenager that spends all day in his room plotting different ways to break into technology and to get around paying for songs or videos off of the Internet. However, a hacker is defined as “One who enjoys the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming or circumventing limitations” (Dictionary.com). If this definition is taken literally, there are many people and situations that can be considered hacking. One particular popular science fiction character that creates a surprisingly hacker persona is that of the young doctor Victor of Mary Shelley’s cult classic Frankenstein. 
Victor Frankenstein has been perceived as crazy, loony, and nutty. Then again, he has also been attributed as being innovative, creative, and inventive. Ironically, all of his stereotypes match the traits of a typical hacker. Victor did not grow up in harsh or detrimental circumstances. In fact, his childhood has been described as living a perfect life in the late 1700’s in Italy (BookRags). Nonetheless, Victor possessed a violent temper and was deeply passionate by nature (Wallechinsky). He channeled this energy by becoming involved in metaphysical arts and by concentrating his attention on natural philosophy. Victor also had the support of his younger brother, William, beloved foster sister Elizabeth, whom he would later marry, and his trusted colleague, Henry Clerval (Wallechinsky). 
As a young genius, Victor was determined to discover the elixir of life (Novelguide). He was seen as sensitive, intelligent, and passionate about his interests and became absorbed in the quest to find out what creates a being (BookRags). Despite his motivation to find out more on how human life actually works, when Victor was seventeen, and about to embark on college life, Elizabeth became ill and delayed his progress on his determination. Victor’s mother successfully saved and cured Elizabeth but contracted the disease herself and died from the extremities of the illness (Wallechinsky). This event caused the reserved Victor to withdraw from the world. With the help of the ones around him, Victor persevered through his depression and progressed onto college where he met a professor that encouraged him to bestow life on inert matter (Wallechinsky).
For Victor Frankenstein, creating a human being out of dead tissue was an innovative approach to science. He began to assemble a human being from components from dissecting rooms and slaughterhouses, but was soon unable to cope with the minuteness of putting together such an intricate network of life (Wallechinsky). He resolved this problem by increasing the height of his creation. After he spent two years working and sacrificing his own health, Victor succeeded in creating a creature with convulsive agitate movement in the limbs which he soon regrets creating (Novelguide). The monster flees from Victor and the creator is left with guilt and a nervous breakdown from creating a hideous beast (Wallechinsky). Victor then hears word that his brother William has been murdered, which Victor resolves was the work of his own creation. Ashamed that he did not admit to his crime and watched his innocent servant hang for false charges, Victor leaves his family and Elizabeth, his wife to be, to make contact with the monster and make amends (Wallechinsky). The monster by this time has learned to communicate to Victor his ultimatum; the scientist must create a second being, a female, for only then will the monster stop seeking his revenge on Victor’s negligence (Wallechinsky). Victor gives in to his request but soon realizes the severity in the possibility of the two monsters creating a demon race. The doctor destroys the female and the monster yet again sought out revenge on Victor (Wallechinsky). His creation begins killing all that are close and dear to Victor including his beloved friend Henry and his recent wife Elizabeth (Wallechinsky). With determination to end the monster’s tyranny and his own guilt, Victor finds the monster in the Arctic, but sadly, an iceberg carried Victor away and he never set eyes on his creation again. After being found by a whaling ship, Victor died without his guilt ever being resolved (Wallechinsky). The monster found his creator dead but then bestowed Victor’s guilt onto himself and has ever since wandered the world seeking resolve (Wallechinsky).
This story may not seem like a manifesto of a computer genius, but it is in fact the tale of a hacking scenario. The main character, Victor, is a driven scientist determined to pursue a dream that no one has ever chanced before. He goes out on a limb to create life from dead human tissue when no one else deemed it possible. In fact, most people in today’s society would deem Victor’s practices close to dehumanization, “a psychological process whereby opponents view each other as less than human and thus not deserving of moral consideration” (Maiese). Victor’s struggles and stereotypes parallel to that of Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs, creators of the Apple computer (Burke). They created the first personal computer when no one else even thought of attempting such a feat. While Wozniak and Jobs were tackling corporate powers (e.g. phone companies, IBM, and the banking system), Victor was pushing the boundaries of the human body system. Both scenarios required determination and innovation for each creator. The recent studied computer hackers have been people that were driven to push the boundaries of technology and to find new ways of wielding it. Victor attempted the exact same feat in wanting to find the fountain of youth. He wanted to manipulate certain body parts to live and think from dead matter and to eventually create the elixir of life. Victor engaged on such a feat simply because it interested him; it kept his aggressions and passions at bay since he was already hot tempered by nature. Why do computer hackers manipulate computers? For the same reasons that Victor manipulated the human body.
Victor valued his work and his family. This was evident in his determination to discover new possibilities and also in his guilt and depression when his family was affected. Victor never saw his actions as a means to playing God in the way that critics compared him to Prometheus, the Greek god that created mankind (Theoi). He was simply curious in the technological advances of the time. It can be argued that Victor was a modern Transhumanist, people who “support development of and access to new technologies that enable everyone to enjoy better minds, better bodies, and better lives” (Humanity +). In other words, Victor was driven by curiosity much like a modern hacker is in the computer world.
To create further analysis of the Frankenstein phenomenon, the monster can also be considered a hacker that attacked Victor’s emotional system. Although he does not have the same motivations or traits as Victor does, the monster cracks into Victor’s brain and finds out what is most precious to him and uses it to his advantage. The monster goes after Victor’s weakness for his friends and family and threatens to harm them if he does not create a female companion. Just like every other type of hacking, the monster creates a domino effect where if one part of the system is altered then another section will become affected. This is not the lighter side to hacking, but it is a form that has been studied. Manipulation of previous resources is the main concept of hacking and the monster is doing just that by controlling Victor through the killing of his loved ones. Victor was beaten down by guilt and shame and only when the doctor die did the monster realize that they were both after the same goal – happiness.
A hacker is not always the stereotypical computer nerd. It has been analyzed that there are different forms of hackers that exist throughout every aspect of history and society. With the example of Victor Frankenstein and his monster, both beings can be categorized as a hacker, each with different traits and means of hacking. Whether the hacker is a computer genius creating blue boxes from his garage or an eighteenth century scientist manipulating dead body parts to generate life, all hackers are driven by either curiosity or a way to manipulate what already exists.

    The late 1960’s youth were a very complicated bunch of people. At the time, so many different events and problems were occurring in the United States. There was the Civil Rights movement with Martin Luther King Jr., the Cold War, Vietnam, and a social movement involving technology advancement and the placement of ones identity. It was simply a time when people started to experiment with new ways of coexisting.
    So much was going on that some of the youth of that time did not know what to do half the time. If there was a protest, some of them did not know why they were there; they just felt like they should be there. The Counterculture movement definitely confused many young people, but also inspired others to fight the government. Some did not agree to conservative social ways of politics during that time period, and the ones that were social outcasts wanted to be accepted. This is how most of the youth came to be involved in such movements and protests.
There were many new cultural lifestyles that emerged that counteracted old ones and the youth seemed to be behind most of these changes. Things such as pop music, underground newspapers, political opposition, drugs, sex, and anything that symbolized freedom. Hippies fed most of the “freedom” movements and influenced mainstream ideals to do the same. With this, the youth was greatly affected by repressive acts and protesting establishment.
     As far as the technocracy movement is concerned, most of the youth saw its ways as inhumane towards society and worked to protest against it. Such protests were innocent where the youth would simply wear signs bearing sympathetic slogans, while others would alienate themselves from social acceptance and just go with the flow of life. The youth saw technocracy at a level of non-intellective forms of personality that came from political and social forms of the time. They saw changes as a way of transforming ones identity but also to change the environment and the world.
     At the time it was called The New Left. This was a group of people that rebelled against technocratic manipulation, but also gave a sense of anarchist idealism that suggested society should act as a “tribe.” Hippies pushed this idea further with experimental ways of living and challenged the way of democracy during that time period.
     It is safe to say that not every single youth knew exactly every thing that was occurring during such a complicated time period. It is known that most of the youth banded together for common causes against political ways, and did not want to be treated like machines to technology.

     David Lightman is a very good example of a computer hacker in the 1980's, but does he exhibit hacker ethic as described by Steven Levy? Levy's first principle on hacker ethic refers to hackers having access to previous ideas and to be able to understand how they work and to build on them to discover new things. Lightman does not do this too much in the movie, but he does manipulate pre-existing systems such as his own computer, the school's computer, a code-locked door, and the pay phone. In each of these cases, he is able to use outside objects or ideas to manipulate them to do what he wants them to do. He connects his computer to others in order to play games, hacks into the school's computer to change his grade, cracks into the code on the door to escape, and wires the pay phone to make a free call.
     The second point is the all information should be free. Lightman doesn't exactly have a lot of information to give out. He's the one going out and finding the information. It's not every time that he decides to hack into a system and finds that the information is right there waiting for him. He has to hack in and find the information another way. For Lightman, it isn't that he's not following the hacker ethic, it's that others are not letting him access the information that should be at his discretion.
     Mistrust authority - promote decentralization. This principle is definitely true for Lightman. The FBI barred Lightman and yet he still found a way to escape to find the truth about Joshua. He knew that he was right and that the high officials were wrong by not listening to him so he veered from their standpoint. Earlier in the movie, Lightman hacked into the school's computer by stealing their password. This again showed his decentralization toward authority. He believed that the school government is a "flawed system" by not giving him free access to the school's computer. Lightman then took the situation into his own hands.
     Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not bogus criteria such as degrees, age, race, or position. Lightman is greatly judged by the fact that he is a seventeen-year-old boy who has no experience in the military nor does he hold a lot of credibility for being an amazing computer hacker. But while he is being judged, he also is biased against his love interest Jennifer because she is a girl. He plays this out by always showing off his skills but never letting her control the computer. However, it is obvious that she does not posses any quality computer skills.
     You can create art and beauty on a computer. The creativity that this ethic principle conveys is the fact that hackers can make very complicated tasks with very few instructions. Lightman practically started a nuclear war by simply asking Joshua if he wanted to play a game. The codes that Lightman encountered and made are considered a beauty of technology along with the fact that, for him, it was enjoyable work as well as an art form.
     Computers can change your life for the better. This can be argued with Lightman’s life because for a while it was making his life disastrous.  No one would believe what he had to say about Joshua and its program and he was going to die because of it. Technology and hacking still gave Lightman the outlet he needed to be happy for it was something that he was good at. Hackers do change people’s lives for the better in the sense that they continue to evolve ideas and see things in a new way.

     Today in class we talked about technocracy. Now I do not claim to be in any way an extreme wizard at understanding the parts of a computer, but I am very savvy when it comes to use one. However, when giving my advice to others who may not have that luxury, I tend to not shut them down or scrutinize their inabilities to simply open the internet. My personal experience with technocracy does not involve another person pushing their tendencies onto me, but rather me displaying mine to another.
     I have accumulated my knowledge of technology through many courses involving computers and the internet, but I think the one class that really had a problem with technocracy was the one that taught me how to type in the fifth grade. Going into the class, I already had a lot of common sense about computers. I was never an extremely cocky child so I just went along with what the teacher was saying even though I knew it prior to her instruction.
     The point of this story is that the teacher plainly did not know anything about technology herself. She was trying to give us a lesson on a subject that she obviously knew nothing about and had not read a single instruction on how to do. I eventually had to stand up and tell her exactly what to do myself and literally started to teach the class how to navigate around a computer desktop. I'm not sure how the teacher felt about a fifth grader telling her what to do, but the class benefited from my instruction in the long run!  
     As far as a more sociological viewpoint of technocracy, I find that in today's world, computers are becoming a standard in most lines of work. Specifically, schools and teachers are adopting a more technological way of teaching. Anyone can get online and earn a bachelor's or master's degree and not even leave their own home. Classes and jobs are developing due to technological advancements and acceptance, but jobs are also lost. Nowadays, it is as simple as a little click of the mouse and many steps of actually interacting with a person can be diminished. People are losing personal contact and are instead replacing them with computers or text messages. Technology is spreading rapidly and it is hard not to be lost in its domination.

Hello all! Well I was really excited to hear everything that we are going to be doing in the hackers class today! I'm just ready to go! I wrote about myself when we first received our accounts, but I'll write a little bit more. I really like to be crazy and out there, but I'm also a very good and persistent student. I usually don't procrastinate, but I also like to have a good time! I take a lot of pictures and I also make movies in my spare time. For Trinity, I play in the orchestra and I'm in the percussion ensemble as well as a crew member on TigerTV for Studio 21 (which is amazing and everyone should check it out!). I'm just ready for a fun and interesting time learning about the different types of hackers and the ones I don't know exist!