information without any knowledge of the information that is contained in
their brain. Today, we do not only need to understand and filter the
information that we receive, but perhaps more important is the ‘process of
production’ of that information. The social need to understand the digital
world is comparable to the learning process of Neo about the virtual world of
The Matrix. When Neo learns how to read and decipher the codes of
information of The Matrix, perceiving the world through the green
composition of binary codes on the screen and also the world of simulation
transformed in information, his achievements are an illustration of what our
digitalized society must do: understand the information, comprehend the
roots, the systems, and have the ability to transform it.
Computer hackers have the ability to intervene in the information
system and ‘play’ with it. In films such as Hackers (Softley, 1995), War Games
and The Matrix, Dade Murphy (Johnny Lee Miller), David Lightman (Matthew
Broderick) and Neo are hackers presented with positive associations:
glamorous sub-cultural heroes, sophisticated rebellious nonconformists who
fight the system. In fact, today, hackers have become the terrorists of the
information system. When information is the main source of power and
control, their ‘crimes’ are not aimed at actual economic or political
institutions but at virtual entrepreneurs who hold the (un)real loot. Hackers
also have the ability to transform the reality we perceive and this renders
them simultaneously powerful and dangerous to the maintenance of the
information system.
We live in a world based on information, intimately linked to a binary
code in which the messages that we receive through digital media are
transformed into 0s and 1s before we receive them. Between emissary and
receptor there is always a ‘computerized censorship’ of 0s and 1s that subtly
and imperceptively interferes with our message. The ‘purity’ of the message
may well be influenced, but the context of its reception will certainly affect
the meaning of the communication. The neutral screen of a computer will not
reflect the emotions that we are trying to convey in an e-mail or an instant
conversation; rather the interpretation of the message will depend on the
receptor, on his mood, on his environment. Therefore, it will be conditioned
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