📚 Finished reading Cult of the Dead Cow How the Original Hacking Supergroup Might Just Save the World by Joseph Menn.

Although I’m not certain how famous they are these days, the hacker group “Cult of the Dead Cow” was greatly influential within hacker culture, and the online world in general, at one point. Including on me. I certainly knew and admired the group - and the tools they shared with the world - when I was more enmeshed in that world, back in the day.

Starting off as a miscellaneous group of pranksters with various technical and non-technical skills exploring and defining online life in the early days of the internet (and before) they grew in size and influence, more recently to campaigning and building tools to preserve the freedoms of the internet and beyond we should all treasure against their constant big-tech and state driven attacks. In the mean time, despite their occasionally legally questionable origins, several of them have gotten into positions of power with regards to various technology or government entities that value their skills - a controversial move to some of course.

The members of the CDC themselves have come and gone over the years. But the group does still exist today, still releasing their text files, well, on and off. In fact their current website looks very much like the t files of the BBS era. But seemingly more as a campaigning activist group seeking to defend human rights online and beyond than continuing their antics of yesteryear, at least publicly.

In an increasingly technological world, hacking, both in a technical and cultural sense, can and surely should be used as a powerful force for good.