All Is One. Except 0 (Alles ist eins. Außer der 0.)

When you listen to the radio,

remember how people came to have

this wonderful tool of communication.

The original source of all technical achievements is the divine curiosity

and play instinct of the tinkering and brooding researcher,

and, to no lesser extent, the technical inventor's constructive imagination.

WHO RULES THE WORLD?

AN OVERDOSE OF FACEBOOK

ADVERTISING IS MASS SURVEILLANCE

DETECTION OF SECRET PROGRAMMES

WHISTLEBLOWERS FOR THE TRUTH?

ALONE AGAINST AMERICA

I'M TAKING YOUR FREEDOM

IS THERE STILL ROOM FOR UTOPIAS?

FORGET ABOUT IT SWITCH OFF

WE ARE THE INTERNET. ABOUT DIGITAL RESISTANCE

MODEMS FOR ALL

HACKER HOME COMPUTER

OPPORTUNITIES FOR THE HOME COMPUTER

SCREEN TRICKS

ALL IS ONE. EXCEPT 0.

I used to do a lot of programming.

There was no other way.

When I switched on my computer,

it expected instructions in a programming language,

a kind of "screen Lego".

We all helped each other out with this.

But first, I'd like to introduce myself.

POETRONIC is my name, at least in the online universe.

It's also the name of one of the first programmes I wrote.

It automatically generates poems.

I'm a writer, and it was clear to me at the time

that I first had to teach my computer

the lyrical modes of expression used by poets.

I first heard about a "Chaos Computer Club"

and a certain Dr Wau in the early 1980s.

I immediately envisaged a kind of rocket scientist

wearing a white lab coat

and with a slide rule and ballpoint pen in his breast pocket.

When I first met Wau in Hamburg back then,

the door opened

and what looked like a hobgoblin in rustic knickerbockers came into the room,

a chubby, cheerful, bacchanalian chap.

Very much the opposite of what I had imagined.

But I liked him right away.

Wau was someone who connected the 19805 and 1705 with the future.

Someone who set a course that enabled a subculture

to become the central technical, cultural and economic current

that led into the 21st century.

A hacker is a person who doesn't let himself be turned on only by the surface,

hut who tries to find out what else can he done with it, especially on a technical level:

the creative, inventive use of technology.

Complexity is the combination of many single things,

each one of which seems manageable.

If we take a car and a goods waggon,

we can combine them to make a Motorail train.

Now you're standing at a closed level crossing barrier,

waiting for the train to come.

In the distance, you hear the wild, arrhythmic beeping of car horns.

What caused them to go off?

Alarm systems with motion detectors.

Complexity cannot be mastered. You can deal with individual things,

but you will be forced to face problems

that cannot in any way be foreseen.

Unpredictability is an essential element of the time in which we live.

We he came friends at computer speed.

I once criticised "Die Datenschleuder", the new club magazine,

and Wau said: You do it! So I became editor-in-chief.

And because I have rheumatism,

we held the editorial conference every Thursday in my flat.

Sometimes people stayed there till Monday.

ABWÄRTS "Computer State", 1981

THE DOOMSDAY SHOW

Reagan made this joke at a microphone rehearsal, probably regretting it later.

But the Cold War between East and West was still on, and Germany was the buffer.

We were caught between these hardened fronts.

On Monday there's a knock on the door and Arafat stands before you,

Tuesday there's a test alarm and paranoia on the tram.

Wednesday the war ls very cold Brezhnev's lurking I the public baths.

Wau could get East and West German TV.

STOP INNER-GERMAN BORDER

So he could clearly see how information was distorted.

Not by real lies, but by omissions.

We questioned the norms of our society:

was there a better system in which everyone could be as free as possible?

On the Left, there was clandestine sympathy for those who'd engaged in armed resistance

because they considered themselves to be at war with the system.

LSD FOR ALL PRISON GUARDS

But Wau didn't like violence or the dogmatic Marxism of many left-wingers.

His sympathies lay with the "Spontis",

who organised the TUNIX Congress in 1978,

which marked a watershed for the alternative movements.

DREAM IS REALITY

Thursday, you already know, 2 thousand agents in the sewers.

Friday belongs to the Mafia, the ravioli comes from Florid.

Saturday evening lunatic asylum, the KGB in the German forests.

Sunday, everything is dear]

World war is near in the Gulf of Mallorca.

Instead of engaging in a hopeless confrontation with the state,

they opted to create "free zones".

Stalingrad Stalingrad.

Germany, a catastrophic state.

We live in a computer state.

We live in a computer state.

We live in a computer state.

Against this background, TAZ, the first alternative daily newspaper was founded.

At the same time, the Green Party was founded, and the PC revolution began.

But there was still little confidence in an electronic future.

Most people were suspicious of the new technology.

At this time a census was held.

KNOWLEDGE FOR THE FUTURE

It smacked of an Orwellian police state.

NO CONTROLS FOR THE FUTURE

There was a massive movement to boycott the census: unimaginable today!

KEEP YOUR DATA SECRET

You guarantee the data will remain confidential? - Yes.

At the meetings that we, the computer-mad mob, were holding at that time,

we eventually reached a point

where we began to think about finding a name for ourselves,

as well as about meeting more regularly

and making contacts nationwide.

Then we placed a classified ad in the TAZ

and met at the TAZ offices in Berlin

in order to launch the Chaos Computer Club.

And if you want to discuss things as a group,

it's also very helpful

to be able to look each other in the eye and discuss things calmly.

It was actually really great

that the computer always played a secondary role,

that the social event Chaos Computer Club was always the more interesting aspect.

And that's the core of what the Chaos Computer Club is to me:

realising that people are more important than machines.

The fascinating thing about the Chaos Club was

that the computer functioned as a kind of social catalyst.

It was a place where people with radically differing opinions and worldviews,

from very different age groups and social backgrounds,

sat down at one table and talked and argued with each other.

I know, you've seen this before.

Oh no, not again!

Not now, please!

Sometimes science fiction helps us to understand history.

The last lines of "Shockwave Rider" contain two suggestions.

"One: This is a rich planet. Therefore poverty and hunger are unworthy of it

and we are obliged to eradicate them.

Two: We are a civilised species.

Therefore, in future,

no one should create an unfair advantage for themselves

by abusing the fact

that our combined knowledge is greater than what any one of us can know."

People saw the new computer technology as a way towards a utopian society.

We were impressed how the novel "Shockwave Rider" predicted the current situation,

and by Robert Anton Wilson, who wrote the "llluminatus" conspiracy trilogy.

Wilson said that computers would totally change our society in the next few years.

He said that holding knowledge would supersede holding property

and that knowledge would be held by a small conspiratorial group.

And Hagbard Celine fought against these people.

I realised that "Illuminatus! might be more real than I thought

Some of our members were only interested

in the wonderful world of technology,

others were also interested in science fiction

and thought about questions of societal development.

Hippie activist Stewart Brand and his crew had been publishing the catalogue since 1968

and wanted to attain a networked consciousness.

Brand was also one of the Merry Pranksters

who rode around in a colourfully painted bus distributing LSD for free.

In 1984, he organised the Hackers Conference,

bringing together flower children and hackers.

Steve Jobs once called the Whole Earth Catalog "the search engine before Google™.

The seeds for the world's most powerful Internet companies

were clearly sown during this LSD-infused time.

I met Tim Leary there:

a hit too American for my taste,

too much into self-promotion, but otherwise a fascinating person.

Not only Leary dreamt of this!

Here are the "hacker ethics" by Stephen Levy.

Access to computers and anything that can teach you how the world really works

should be unlimited and total. All information should be free.

Mistrust authority, promote decentralisation.

You can create art and beauty on a computer.

Computers can change your life for the better.

Hackers should be judged by their actions, not bogus criteria such as appearance,

age, origin, species, gender or social position.

But the CCC added rules to the American hacker ethics.

"Don't mess with data!" is the first thing that occurs to me:

handle other people's data with care.

"Use public data, protect private data."

When I look at political practice in this country,

the opposite often seems to he true.

But this idea really nails it, especially regarding our use of other people's data,

something we're now increasingly confronted with.

The "hacker ethics" came from the MIT. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology

is a kind of Vatican for technology lovers.

There has been a model railway club there since 1946.

The people who thought up the circuits

and inventively constructed them were called "hackers".

These experiences had given them a good understanding of computer hardware,

and so the club became the nucleus of the worldwide hacker movement in the 1970s.

The problem was the Federal Post Office in West Germany.

This had a legally enshrined monopoly on all telecommunications technology.

You weren't even allowed to repair your own telephone socket.