Afloyd.187
net.misc
utzoo!decvax!harpo!floyd!trb
Mon May  3 10:48:09 1982
The times, they are a'changin'
Yesterday afternoon I went to work for a few hours (on a beautiful
spring Sunday) and then I went down to the studio of WFMU, my favorite
radio station, to help out with their annual fundraising phone-in
marathon.  So there I was sitting behind a line of phones with a few
other devotees to the radio station.  As the night wore on, to my right
sat a pretty young lady, the type who ordinarily, I thought, would have
nothing to do with we "techie types."  After a few hours of personning
the phones, she turned out to be, at least, courteously friendly.  She
mentioned that she worked in a mall (I was not surprised) and that she
had had a bit of wine before she came by the studio (again, I was not
surprised, but I would never have guessed that she had done so; I
assume she was well practiced at such activity).  Anyway, to get to the
point...

After she told me that she had been out drinking earlier, I mentioned
that I was messing around at work earlier in the day.  She asked me
what I did for a living.  I told her I worked with computers.  (Here
comes the good part...)

She then asked me, "Are you a hacker?" (!!!)

I said, concealing my mild shock, that I was, and asked her where she
came to hear about hackers.  She told me that she read an article about
hackers in Rolling Stone Magazine, and she said it sounded like fun,
although she didn't think she had the math background for it.  I told
her that if you enjoy it and work hard at it, that that would probably
get you farther than a math background.

Anyway, it looks like that article in Rolling Stone (which I have not
yet read) did something positive to the public image of the CS-type
generally, and the hacker particularly.
	Andy Tannenbaum   Bell Labs  Whippany, NJ   (201) 386-6491