Papa state said it first- those are dangerous thoughts, better not thought.
Read something valuable, like Jules Verne, who would never educate you too make Nitro Glycerin.
Or read a good comp-science book, instead of learning how to craft a virus.
S/he who can engineer a building, can tear it down- deal with it. And by virtue of reading, anyone can do that- and this is only going to get worser.
Any teenager tomorrow will be able to crisper up a plastic eating bacteria, turning any journalists notebook to black goo under there fingertips. If only those teenagers had some perspective, something to loose, some dream to be held hostage- you could actually prevent this.
But doctoring at the symptoms- its so much easier. The other thing- that is almost work.
To teach everyone how to craft a china masterpiece of art- that is a nightmare, to declare playing soccer illegal, that is doable.
I wish there was a refund on wasted time on propaganda.
I read the Jolly Roger's Cookbook (and many other BBS text files) as a teenager and used it to make thermite with my chemistry teacher in the 10th grade. And reading Phrack and old virus magazines like 40HEX did more to engender intellectual curiosity than any of my teachers and provided a solid foundation of low-level programming skills. I'm not sure how you'd weigh the net impact on the world of this kind of information being available, but my hunch is that it's overwhelmingly positive. I'm automatically suspicious of this deeply cynical view of human nature where everyone is so easily tempted to evil deeds if presented with forbidden knowledge and the merest opportunity.
I'm with you. TAC was one of the first books I encountered that described out-of-the-box thinking, tool-building, and the hacker ethos of using a thing beyond its intended purpose (not to mention a healthy distrust of authority).
I managed somehow to get through my teenage years without ever throwing a molotov cocktail at a LEO.
It's a numbers game. Let's say 99.9% are good people who would only use the knowledge for wholesome purposes. That still leaves 0.1% to do bad stuff. So if all kids knew how to make viruses, 0.1% of all of those kids would be a lot of virus writers.
I'm not saying we should lock the knowledge up. More that your anecdote doesn't really change things.
> those are dangerous thoughts, better not thought...
I disagree completely. America's government has been unable to evolve with a changing country. Partisanship is at its worst ever at a time when the quality of life for most people is declining. Now more than ever, people need to be learning how to resist an oppressive government, because like it or not, our government seems to be becoming an authoritative corporate oligarchy.
