I don't think the guy who interviewed me from Atlas Obscura disclosed that he was from Atlas Obscura.. I thought he was some kid doing a high school paper or something. :) Meh. Oh well.
Anyway, he didn't get some of his terminology correct. I've directed him to how he can clean it up, however.
In the months and years after the party in LaGrange, J and K, and I, only crossed paths maybe 2, possibly three times. THis would have been between 1987 and 1993. I didn't know them directly. I sat next to J once at a Denny's in either Aurora (Fox Valley Mall) or in Burr Ridge. The second or third time was at a place in Downers Grove called Omegas. All were late-night get togethers, impromptu, informal.
(Edit: added "in the months and years after the party in LaGrange" for clarity sake.)
Surely the statute of limitations on this has passed now and we can know who these legends really were? Perhaps encourage them to seek legal advice about revealing themselves.
Criminal charges don't encompass the entirety of the potential consequences for the "perpetrators" revealing their identities. Go through a long list of famous people or people you know and ask yourself "how would their lives be impacted if it turned out they did the Max Hedroom hack". For many it would probably be inconsequential or likely beneficial, for some it would be disastrous. Consider, for example, if someone was working a job with a high degree of responsibility, perhaps involving security clearances, would they want to risk disclosure?
I was going to reply indicating that criminal law has no Statute of Limitations but that seems to be a Canadian thing. In the US it has to be considered a "Heinous crime". I'm certain under modern light of what hacking has become they'd likely consider this relatively innocent event heinous by modern standards.
That's great - and interesting that someone would react with "I got so upset that I wanted to bust the TV set" about it!
As this is an article about hacks, then I'll also point out that Max Headroom played the role of a "computer-generated television journalist", but there was nothing computer-generated about him at all... it was all prosthetics and makeup: even the "computer graphics" in the background were hand-drawn!
>"I got so upset that I wanted to bust the TV set"
I always found that reaction to be bizarre too. I wonder if some people see journalists and know that if they play up a character then their chances of being on the news goes way up. I think that explains a lot of the 'man on the street' perspectives we see in TV news. It becomes a game of one-upmanship to entertain the watcher and "get famous."
I'm no psychologist, but I can well imagine that someone could feel considerable cognitive dissonance if an institution that they had considerable trust in was unexpectedly and obviously subverted like this.
That was an interesting time. The concepts of 3D graphics, VR, AI, web/matrix/cloud/whatever, ubiquitous computing, smart phones/tablets/watches, global mapping (to hallway detail), [near-]real-time satellite imagery, weather prediction practically to foot & minute scale, affordable on-demand travel to anywhere, machine learning, machine vision, etc were becoming understood & popularized decades before they were anywhere close to feasible in hardware.
> were becoming understood & popularized decades before they were anywhere close to feasible in hardware.
I think there is an interesting feedback in that (not the first person to say it), you see accounts of scientists and engineers who grew up on sci-fi like Star Trek inspired to ask "Why can't we have that?".
It was the same for the original TV series of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. They got enquiries about what computer system they used to make the graphics for the guide. They were all hand drawn.
Special effects were done manually until quite recently. Independence Day was probably the last big budget film to use models. Now it's all computer generated.
One story I've heard is that the original Tron was responsible for a lot of this. They originally tried to use computer graphics for many of the movie's effects, but it proved to be way too expensive and time-consuming using the technology of the time. So they ended up hand-animating and rotoscoping most of it. The hollywood studios deemed the CG a failure and were scared off of it for a number of years following. So computer graphics didnt get as much adoption as it would have otherwise throughout the 80s.
Also many, many movies still use practical models in addition to CG. It's just that now movies can blend both techniques to use whatever is most appropriate for a given shot. What is rare now are movies that use no CG at all.. even things like Mad Max which are touted for their practical effects utilize a TON of CG work.
There were quit a few articles on the 25th Anniversary back in 2012, but this article by Motherboard went into a lot more technical detail about how this was probably pulled off:
Indeed, the current link seems to just be Atlas Obscura engaging in some churnalism and regurgitating existing articles on the subject. Apropos of not much, the account that posted the current link a) is new, and b) has posted nothing but Atlas Obscura links thus far.
I also find it a bit strange that Atlas Obscura is even posting this, being that its modus operandi is stated as being "the definitive guide to the world's wondrous and curious places." Signal intrusion or the 80s aren't much of a "place" no matter how curious they are.
You are correct. Like I said -- There's some issues with accuracy in this guy's article, unfortunately.
By 1987, people were well aware of what hackers were. Not so much the details, but, the basic concept at least, was well known.
I'd say the term entered the public vocabulary by about 1982, with War Games.
Truth be told, hacking even garnered some of its own vocabulary from War Games. That's precisely where the "war"- prefix of different discplines comes from, first wardialing, then wardriving. I'm sure there will be more. I'd love to see warfaxing catch on..that's an untapped goldmine of fun. :) I'm trying to think of what such programs were called (programs that searched a given block of lines within a given prefix for any modems set to auto-answer) before War Games. "Hunters", I think.
Cheeseball plot aside, as a movie, War Games is, in retrospect a surprisingly accurate portrayl of hacking at the time. The discovery process was slow, laborious, time-consuming, and produced craploads of paper. It was also done by the marginally social, quietly, in relative isolation from others, not as a group, or as the public team sport it is now.
The gear Broderick's character was using, even -- By 1982, a box like a toggle driven IMSAI 8080 with an 8" floppy drive and a monochrome monitor would have essentially been throw-away, garbage-quality gear.
High-quality systems are superfluous these days, but, for the longest time, most hacking, including back then, was done predominantly on discarded, semi-obsolete, well-worn gear, just as depicted in the film.
Yes. Things like Wargames, and Hugo Cornwall's book (1986) and the Prestel Hack (1985) or Micro Live hack (1983) all raised public conciousness of hackers, at least in the UK.
Note the term 'hardly existed,' and not 'did not exist at all.' Yes, hackers existed, but the blanket term (in the popular consciousness) for using it to describe the specific subculture of computer hackers developed slowly in the 80's and 90's
You know if this thing were an everyday occurrence (not that I even watch TV) it would probably be annoying, but the nature of the Max Headroom broadcast intrusion was more comical than anything, and it's almost a shame that no one has done anything like it since. So long as the broadcast intrusion isn't violent, overly crude, or exceedingly long/disruptive I think it would really be interesting to witness something like this again (it's kind of amusing to think you might even make a sport of it, in very limited doses). Most of the time I understand why the FCC cracks down so hard on misuse of RF, but it's hard not to have a soft spot for this sort of gag.
>and it's almost a shame that no one has done anything like it since.
Well, technically this happens all the time with website hacks and what not. The problem is that the "culture" of hacking is a lot like taggers. Its an attempt to promote your group or brand. Its childish bragging.
While the Headroom hack was childish as well, it was also completely absurdist and didn't promote anything. I think its rare to see something like this where the hackers aren't pushing some agenda or self-promoting. From an aesthetic perspective it was pretty impressive. It really sells the idea of being creepy and mysterious.
As a nerdy Chicago tween at that time, this stuff was legendary. These guys became heroes on all the local BBS's and in the local geekdom. Man, I miss those days.
I think another big part of the "appeal" or notability comes from the fact that there were so few gatekeepers for information on par with TV and radio stations.
Nowadays you could probably get some attention, both positive and negative, from defacing the website of a huge company. Maybe if you got "Facebook" to show up as "Fuckbook" for thousands of users for 10-15 minutes or something. Otherwise, there are so many websites and we are so accustomed to having access to a sort of mass communication that the rarity and impact is diminished.
I remember being a kid in the 80's and a teen in the 90's and even then, I was blown away when I learned what public access TV was. The idea that you could actually get on TV!! as a normal person and run a show seemed insane. TV was that thing that talked at you. There were 13 channels for us frugal or less well-off families and there were maybe 50 or 60 for our luckier friends. Other than that, it was something out of reach.
We played with camcorders and tape decks, playing at being radio DJs or TV personalities but the idea of something like a Shoutcast station in the late 90's or a Youtube channel in the 2000's would have fried my tiny brain as a hyperactive, creative little kid.
So not only was someone subverting the technical systems of a big company but they were doing it to TV. At least to me, that was one of those larger than life things that took place elsewhere and the rest of us just watched. Co-opting a TV broadcast was like getting the policeman's mythical "master key" or sneaking into the White House.
> While the Headroom hack was childish as well, it was also completely absurdist and didn't promote anything. I think its rare to see something like this where the hackers aren't pushing some agenda or self-promoting. From an aesthetic perspective it was pretty impressive. It really sells the idea of being creepy and mysterious.
I agree, I got to thinking about it and there really isn't anything in the way of "hacks" anymore that isn't pushing an (often absurd) agenda (like "Anonymous"). It's sort of a shame that everyone has to push an agenda, but I guess that's nothing new. There was really a cool aura to the Max Headroom broadcast that you don't ever really see in other "hacks."
That being said, I think it would be cool to have a HackThisSignal (maybe like HackThisSite?) where you might encourage people to pull off more things like the Max Headroom intrusion in a more controlled manner. It kind of ruins a little bit of the aesthetic, not being totally unexpected, but I think it would be a cool way to show off this sort of gag and learn more about Microwave/RF systems without necessarily being on the wrong side of the law.
You'll enjoy this. I know in some larger cities, this is a pretty common thing. In South Florida you'll wander into a pirate radio station pretty often, usually identifiable by it's lack of censorship, poor broadcast quality, and incessant rambling of the host over the music about every 10 seconds.
I think my favourite (rather savage) line from the series was in the Xmas special which went along the lines of "Whether you're busy hanging decorations in London, or busy being decorated for a hanging in the Philippines - it's Christmas!".
The submission rate is almost exponential.
Also goes to show how easy it is to churn out interesting articles by digging into the HN archives and picking up forgotten stories.
Sorry about that. I have a tendency to over-emote.
I was trying to highlight how the interest in this "relatively" obscure incident and character continues to exist.
I would love to see an infographic of the topics HN likes. That sounds like a really hairy problem, I will leave it to others. Then again my Python is a little rusty.
I get bothered by it regularly. I don't mind HN talking about it, because the people here are a bit different than the average joe, but...Over the last 3-4 years, i've been approached by three or four different filmmakers, some with fairly serious pedigrees, who were looking to adapt the AMA into a screenplay or documentary. I don't think its right to do that, for a variety of reasons, so I've politely declined. I did one podcast a few years ago that lasted like 3 hours, and just declined another podcast (Reddit's "Upvoted" series) a week or so ago.
Part of why I'm not too hot on talking about the whole Headroom thing is that invariably, people end up accusing me of being Max. Bleh. The guy who did the Vice/Motherboard article at one point even threatened to do as much. Didn't speak with him for months after that little stunt.
But despite all that, even though I'm a long-time HN user and hit this board multiple times a day most days, this is still the first time I've seen any reference to this incident. I, for one, am glad it got posted this time, as it's a pretty interesting story.
1.8 submissions per year is hardly "enamored". There's plenty of topics that get some 1.8 submissions per day for years. Considering how many of us WERE enamored with Max Headroom way back in the day, I'm surprised how indifferent we are to the subject now.
In 2007 a Czech art group hacked a webcam and incorporated a nuclear explosion at the location it monitored. It later got showed on a weather news segment.
1) The video cuts out -precisely- at the point in Dr. Who where the guy says "A massive electric shock -- he must have died instantly!" ...probably accidental, but just perfect..lol
2) The block of shows on WTTW (Channel 11) on Sunday night were often very, very avant-garde in content. To be able to take it to an entirely higher level like that, against the backdrop of already weird stuff...thats just priceless..
3) The fact that the public was split between those who found it hilarious, and those who found it frightening... what more could you ask for?
As a hack, with all its warts and confusion, it's a triple axle quadruple salcow kind of performance. :)
BTW, speaking of weird -- I've been asked on occasion, how weird. Check this out:
This is "The Shivering Man". There was a show that aired late nights on Channel 11 at the time, called Image Union.. Image Union was sort of a showcase for short subject amateur/experimental/avant-garde films and videos. It was on the air about maybe half an hour or an hour after Doctor Who every sunday night, and usually ended the scheduled broadcast day.
One of the films that aired on Image Union around that time (1987-1989 or so) was "The Shivering Man". Here, you've got a ballet dancer in a red dress jumping around guy covered in talcum powder having a conniption fit/seizure, followed up by a fat bald guy in a chair who, uh, suggestively..sprinkles.. when the chair is shaken..lol..
Tame by internet standards, but totally WTF-worthy by late 80's Chicago public television standards. By running this sort of stuff, they were all but inviting a visit from Max, if you ask me. Weird attracts weird.
Which eventually became a Coke commercial with Matt Frewer who went on to play a doctor in "Dr. Doctor, Dr. Doctor" an uproariously funny TV series on CBS.
I'm the guy who did the AMA.
I don't think the guy who interviewed me from Atlas Obscura disclosed that he was from Atlas Obscura.. I thought he was some kid doing a high school paper or something. :) Meh. Oh well.
Anyway, he didn't get some of his terminology correct. I've directed him to how he can clean it up, however.
..."Churnalism" is spot-on.