Hackers: Cyberpunks or microserfs?

Abstract

Hackers and rapid technological change produce similar responses: they simultaneously produce feelings of fear and fascination. This paper explores how ambivalence to technology in general is mirrored in both fictional and nonfictional accounts of hacking and how such representations reflect our concerns about the best way to control technological ingenuity in a hi‐tech age. William Gibson's Neuromancer and Douglas Coupland's Microserfs are used as the main examples of fictional portrayals of hacking and it is argued that the imaginative licence exhibited by their authors ultimately draws upon contemporary concerns over the role technology plays in modern life. The key underlying theme behind both fictional and nonfictional accounts of hacking is shown to be the issue of technological control. Hackers exhibit technological virtuosity in an age when rapid change and its accompanying confusion place such mastery at a premium. They are portrayed as controllers of technology and yet on other occasions (and sometimes simultaneously) they are depicted as being controlled by the technology they use. Examples are provided of how such virtuosity is often closely associated with an unhealthy level of technological intimacy. This leads to the charge that hackers have become somewhat dehumanised by their expertise. The previous paper by Douglas Thomas illustrates the extent to which the various immaterial concepts associated with hacking are often socially contested and subsequently grounded with reference to physical terms. This paper continues this theme by showing how the allegedly dehumanising aspects of hacking are frequently described with recourse to body‐based images of dependency and physical invasion. The paper concludes that for the most beneficial future technological progress, society will need to steer hackers through a middle‐path between the anarchic and drone‐like extremes described by Gibson's and Coupland's disturbing visions.

Keywords:

• Cultural lag
• cyberpunks
• hackers
• Information Age
• microserfs
• neuromancer
• otaku
• technological change