Were computer hackers in the early 1980's as dangerous as they are today? How are today's hackers dangerous to society? With the help of Dina Ingber's 1981 essay, "Computer Addicts", I hope to compare these two generations of hackers and see just how much the world has advanced in the last twenty-two years. Making my point that hackers of the eighties knew an extreme amount about computers for their time, however due to the new technology of today, hackers of the 21st century are much more capable of causing serious problems around the world.
In her essay titled, "Computer Addicts", freelance author and editor Dina Ingber explains how during the early eighties hackers would be sitting in computer centers across the country gazing at the computer monitor. These hackers ignored their personal hygiene, lost friends, and even flunked out of school because of their addiction to computers. She then explains in her essay that hackers are the wave of the future due to the computer revolution going on in the early eighties and still going on today. Ingber later claims that kids like the computers because they will always do what they tell them to do and the computer will never insult them. Seeing how computers are totally different from humans someone can see how these hackers find it harder and harder to communicate with people after they have had nothing but a computer to talk to for so long. .
In conclusion to the essay, Ingber proposes that hackers might know something about the future that no one else does. She gives an example by writing about a student at MIT who had to be dragged off his computer for the fear of his health, but is now a multimillionaire in the computer industry. This just goes to show people that computers are the future and the hackers were simply the pioneers of the computer industry. .
Unfortunately, today"s hackers are not just someone who likes to play games on a computer and try to make computer programs.