Today (June 1st, 2005) Google News contained about 3870 online articles referring to ‘hackers’. Although I didn’t bother to check all 3870, I would venture to guess that nearly all of them were talking about computer hackers. Computer hackers (both criminal and otherwise) have become so well known that they are now a recognized group in our society. However the Internet has made possible the resurgence of another kind of hacker, the analog hacker.
Hardly new, analog hackers have been with us since the dawn of the industrial age. They are the fanatical inventors, builders and gadget freaks of the mechanical world (just like their computer hacking counterparts in the electronic world). Similar to Bell, Edison, Ford and others, they see physical devices as fascinating puzzles waiting to be solved, or at least, understood and possibly improved upon.
So how has the Internet changed analog hacking? Like a lot of other hobbies, it has brought together analog hackers from around the world and has created a virtual body of knowledge which never existed before. This has made possible everything from the Robotic Nerf Gun (http://www.ottawarobotics.org/nerf-cons.html) to family built solid fuel rockets (http://nar.org/index.html). However, the influence of the Internet has also put professions like locksmithing, which has been built upon ‘security by obscurity’ since the Middle Ages, under constant pressure due to leaked secrets and new research by analog hackers. This potential conflict, between analog hackers and our traditional bastions of physical security, is what this site is all about.
Some of the questions we will be dealing with include:
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