For hackers, the uncharted frontiers of cyberspace presented a rare opportunity to not only explore but to create, and in doing so, expand and control. Where cyberpunks were content to be end users in the system of the future, hackers have always been preoccupied with understanding the technology of “now.” While there is great crossover between cyberpunks and hackers, the pervading utilitarianism of hacking culture is absent from cyberpunk literature, fashion, and community. Not content merely to be “jacked in,” hackers have always sought new terrain, new technology, and above all, a position at the height of the new social hierarchy.

Originally used to refer to anyone with a profound interest in understanding the inner workings of both networked and stand-alone computers, by 1983’s release of the feature film War Games, the fringe culture of hacker’s began to be impressed with a cultural identity, and a new definition. A seeming anachronism at its release, War Games told the story of a young boy who accidentally hacked into a government defense agency while experimenting with low level exploits such as altering his report card by connecting to his high school’s computer system. At the date of its release, the first personal computer had only been available to the public for two years, and at a prohibitively expensive price—owning a computer, let alone using it to connect to the few private networks that had begun to emerge, was anything but common. It was media representations and movies such as War Games, which first made public the hacker lifestyle that first prompted the mass purchase and use of personal computers, which in turn prompted the development of the internet and the technologies that hackers would come to master. As such, hacker culture has been deeply intertwined with pop culture for much of its existence.