The Hacker Manifesto – 8 January 1986
The Hacker Manifesto, also known as “The Conscience of a Hacker,” turns **40 years old** today. It was written by Loyd Blankenship (using the pseudonym “The Mentor”) on 8 January 1986, shortly after his arrest.
The manifesto was first published later that year in the underground hacker magazine _Phrack_ (Volume One, Issue 7, September 1986) and became one of the most famous documents in hacker culture. It articulates the hacker ethos and perspective, beginning with the iconic line “Another one got caught today…” and explaining the motivations and mindset of hackers in the 1980s.
The manifesto’s most powerful passage – a timeless cry for understanding – remains as relevant today as it was four decades ago:
> We explore… and you call us criminals. We seek after knowledge… and you call us criminals. We exist without skin colour, without nationality, without religious bias… and you call us criminals. You build atomic bombs, you wage wars, you murder, cheat, and lie to us and try to make us believe it’s for our own good, yet we’re the criminals.
>
> _—The Mentor,The Conscience of a Hacker_
The Hacker Manifesto shaped the hacker community’s view of itself and continues to influence new generations of technology enthusiasts. It established an ethical foundation for hacking—one focused on curiosity, learning, and the pursuit of knowledge rather than malicious intent.
The document has been quoted in films (_Hackers_ , 1995), referenced by whistleblowers like Edward Snowden, and remains required reading for anyone seeking to understand the true spirit of hacker culture.
I was 19 in 1986, finishing my A-levels and preparing to start at Drew University that autumn. I didn’t encounter The Hacker Manifesto until the following year, but when I did, it spoke directly to something I’d felt but couldn’t articulate. The Mentor was writing about my generation—young people who found in computers something that finally understood us, who were frustrated by educational systems that couldn’t keep pace with our curiosity.
Reading it again today, forty years on, I found myself unexpectedly moved to tears. Perhaps it’s a sense of loss—for that moment when I believed technology could liberate us, when “the world of the electron and the switch” felt like a space free from the prejudices and limitations of the physical world. Perhaps it’s nostalgia for a time when hacking meant pure exploration, before the word became synonymous with crime and malice in the public consciousness.
Or perhaps it’s recognising how much The Mentor’s words still matter. His cry of “My crime is that of curiosity” resonates in an age of locked-down devices, walled gardens, and end-user licence agreements that forbid us from truly understanding the technology that shapes our lives.
The manifesto reminds us that the drive to explore, learn, and question authority through technology isn’t criminal—it’s fundamentally human. And maybe that’s why it still has the power to move me, four decades later.
> Yes, I am a criminal. My crime is that of curiosity. My crime is that of judging people by what they say and think, not what they look like.
>
> _—The Mentor,The Conscience of a Hacker_
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