hacker poetry | HIGH ALERT

More Hacker Poetry: Passions Proclaimed in Perl

I ran into Unix patch command creator Larry Wall's stunning poem Black Perl poem in a Boing Boing post last year. It was only recently, however, that I discovered the Perl-based poetry of Sharon Hopkins and her fascinating 2002 paper "Camels and Needles: Computer Poetry Meets the Perl Programming Language". Sharon's paper contains and references numerous poems written as runnable code in the Perl programming language.

Larry Wall's Black Perl:

BEFOREHAND: close door, each window & exit; wait until time.

open spellbook, study, read (scan, select, tell us);

write it, print the hex while each watches,

reverse its length, write again;

kill spiders, pop them, chop, split, kill them.

unlink arms, shift, wait & listen (listening, wait),

sort the flock (then, warn the "goats" & kill the "sheep");

kill them, dump qualms, shift moralities,

values aside, each one;

die sheep! die to reverse the system

you accept (reject, respect);

next step,

kill the next sacrifice, each sacrifice,

wait, redo ritual until "all the spirits are pleased";

do it ("as they say").

do it(*everyone***must***participate***in***forbidden**s*e*x*).

return last victim; package body;

exit crypt (time, times & "half a time") & close it,

select (quickly) & warn your next victim;

AFTERWORDS: tell nobody.

wait, wait until time;

wait until next year, next decade;

sleep, sleep, die yourself,

die at last

Hacker poetry: Switch Thrower for the World

Featured in Steven Levy's 'Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution', this poem is a parody of Carl Sandburg's 'Chicago'. Written by MIT student Peter Sampson in the 1950s, It is believed to be one of the first recorded uses of the word 'hacking' to describe somebody doing something technically brilliant. Published in a school newsletter, it refers to describes the activities of the still extant Tech Model Railroad Club frequented by many of MIT's early computer pioneers.

Switch Thrower for the World, Fuze Tester, Maker of Routes,

Player with the Railroads and the System's Advance Chopper.

Grungy, hairy, sprawling,

Machine of the Point Function Line-o-lite:

They tell me you are wicked, and I believe them; for I have seen your

painted light bulbs under the Lucite, luring the system coolies

Under the tower, dust all over the place, hacking with bifurcated springs

Hacking even as an ignorant freshman hacks who has never lost occupancy and

has dropped out.

Hacking the M-Boards, for under its locks are the switches and under its

control the advance around the layout.

Hacking!

Hacker poetry: Agrippa

For a while now, I 've been collecting bits and pieces of poetry with that tie into a hacker theme. I've decided to post them here one-by-one in the coming weeks.

The first offering: 'Agrippa (a book of the dead)' released in 1992 by William Gibson on 3.5" floppy disk and set to encrypt itself into oblivion after a single reading. Published in collaboration with artist Dennis Ashbaugh, the floppy disk came embedded in an apocalyptic looking art book. A gallery of pictures depicting the book can be found here and for those that want the original 3.5" floppy disk experience, an emulation can be found on this UCSB website.