The WarGames Scenario:’ Regulating Teenagers and Teenaged Technology (1980-1984)

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Author’s Note: Thanks to Melani McAlister, Laura Cook Kenna, Julie Passanante Elman, KyleRiismandel, Laurel Clark, Bret Schulte, and Television & New Media’s anonymous reviewer for theirinsightful comments on previous drafts of this project.

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“The WarGames Scenario”Regulating Teenagers and TeenagedTechnology (1980–1984)Stephanie Ricker SchulteGeorge Washington University

WarGames (1983), the first mass-consumed, visual representation of the internet, servedas both a vehicle and framework for America’s earliest discussion of the internet.WarGames presented the internet simultaneously as a high-tech toy for teenagers and aweapon for global destruction. In its wake, major news media focused on potentialrealities of the “WarGames Scenario.” In response, Congress held hearings, screenedWarGames, and produced the first internet-regulating legislation. WarGames engaged a“teenaged technology” discourse, which cast both internet technology itself and its usersas rebellious teenagers in need of parental control. This discourse enabled policy makersto equate government internet regulation with parental guidance rather than withsuppression of democracy and innovation, a crucial distinction within 1980s cold warcontext. Thus, this article historicizes the internet as a cultural text, examining howtechnology and its regulation shaped and were shaped by cultural representations.

Keywords: internet; film; politics; history; teenagers; WarGames

From his bedroom sanctuary, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) used hishome computer to change failing grades, to impress a girl, and to bring the world

to the brink of global destruction in the 1983 film WarGames. A suburban teenagedcomputer-hacker, Lightman spent much of his life exiled in his locked room, unsu-pervised by his parents, playing on his home computing system. Unmotivated byhigh school academic and extracurricular activities, Lightman taught himself to usea modem to connect with other computers and ultimately unintentionally hacked intothe Pentagon’s defense system.1 Although Joshua, the military’s computer, uttered itseerily monotone warning “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?” Lightmanimpatiently pressed on, replying “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.” Assuminghe was playing an unreleased videogame, Lightman engaged a realistic war-simulationprogram, commanding missiles and tactical maneuvers that nearly brought theUnited States and Soviet Union to nuclear war. A critically acclaimed and immenselypopular film, WarGames grossed nearly $80 million and was nominated for four

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Academy Awards, and, for most Americans, the movie was their first “experience”with the internet.2 Although WarGames famously concluded that the “only winningmove” in Global Thermonuclear War was “not to play,” legislators felt they wereforced to “play,” lest more savvy hackers and gamers gain dominion over the new,technologically terrifying, world.

In the film’s wake, major American news media organizations anxiously ques-tioned government and military officials about whether or not the film’s fictionalplot, dubbed the “WarGames Scenario,” could actually happen. The three major tele-vision networks aired a flurry of television reports using WarGames as a frame forunderstanding the perils of new technology. The first report, featured on ABC, inves-tigated the film’s plot as a potential real-world scenario. The report’s opening com-pared WarGames to Dr. Strangelove, a cinematic icon of cold war anxieties. ABCbroadcasted a famous clip from the 1964 satire in which an Air Force pilot rode anuclear bomb like a bucking bronco as it dropped from an airplane. The report fol-lowed with a clip from WarGames of Lightman dialing into NORAD (NorthAmerican Aerospace Defense Command), introducing the film as: “Another movieabout nuclear madness . . .” (Inderfurth 1983). Not only did this pairing suggest aparallel between the teen hacker and the cold war cowboy, but it also connected themodem and the nuclear bomb. The report investigated whether a computer or simu-lation could accidentally trigger World War III. In an interview with ABC reporterRick Inderfurth, NORAD Spokesperson General Thomas Brandt claimed checksand balances systems prevented computer errors of the magnitude portrayed inWarGames. In these systems, Brandt reassured viewers, “man is in the loop. Manmakes decisions. At NORAD, computers don’t make decisions” (Inderfurth 1983).Like ABC, in the weeks after WarGames’ release NBC fretted over the film’s “scaryauthenticity,” noting that military computers “occasionally go wrong” (Chancellor1983). Ultimately, NBC confidently addressed “all you computer geniuses with yourcomputers and modems and auto-dialers” taunting them to “give up,” assuringpotential Lightman copycats, “There’s no way you can play global thermonuclearwar with NORAD, which means the rest of us can relax and enjoy the film”(Chancellor 1983).

However, Congress was not ready to sit back and enjoy the popcorn so quickly;it responded to this media attention by holding subcommittee hearings on computersecurity in both the Senate and House and by showing excerpts of the filmWarGames at the opening of the hearings.3 These hearings ultimately resulted in thenation’s first comprehensive legislations about the internet and the first ever federallegislation on computer crime: the Counterfeit Access Device and Computer Fraudand Abuse Act of 1984 (P.L. 98–473, 98 Stat. 2190), enacted in October 1984 andcommonly referred to as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), hoped to makecomputer networks more secure by making illegal unauthorized access to any gov-ernment computers, accessing national defense, foreign relations, or credit-relatedinformation.4 The Act remains the precedent for American regulatory internet policy.

In this sense, WarGames served as both a vehicle and a framework for the firstwidespread public discussion of the internet. The film presented the internet simul-taneously as a high-tech toy for teenagers and as a potential weapon for globaldestruction. The film also anthropomorphized the computer, “Joshua,” as an adoles-cent male and coded individuals with evolved computer skills as both “teenaged”and potentially threatening “antiestablishment” figures, no matter their physical age.The film placed internet use in the context of two tensions already dominant inAmerican culture since the 1960s—cold war military expansion and antiestablish-ment youth culture—thereby blending cold war panic about global destruction withfestering disquiet over generational divisions held over from the 1960s and 1970s.By framing the internet in the context of teenaged users and video game play, thefilm portrayed hacking as an innocent rebellion rather than a malicious actable andhelped produce the internet itself and the internet’s primary users as teenaged. Inturn, the government was produced and produced itself as a stern but fair “parent” tothese teenagers and “teenagers,” fostering their development rather than inhibitingtheir growth. Although this “teen technology” discourse emphasized the internet andits users as potentially dangerous, it also viewed both as key to a potentially brightfuture, if they could be effectively domesticated. Unsupervised young hackers likeBroderick’s character in WarGames were dangerous to domestic security, but if theirgeneration’s technological skills could be drafted in the fight against the SovietUnion or in the interest of the American economy, they could serve as a potentiallyuseful and powerful democratizing force. In the wake of War Games, emerging poli-cies hoped to teach youths socially appropriate computer use that would allow themto direct their entrepreneurial spirit into approved channels in service to the forcesof American capitalism.

This article has two goals: first, it shows how 1980s U.S. internet policy decisionsmust be understood in the context of a larger and emerging set of cultural under-standings, particularly of the film WarGames and its surrounding news mediadebate.5 In short, policy must be understood in relation to its media context, and pol-icy history must be understood in relation to media history, specifically news andpopular cultural history.6 Second, this article contributes to a larger understanding ofthe cultural and political history of the internet, as both a material technology and adiscursive construction. Although home computer ownership surged in the late1970s and early 1980s, modem use did not. As a result, in the early 1980s mostAmericans learned about the internet through popular culture, like WarGames, andnews media outlets, before they experienced it personally. These early representa-tions of the internet helped formulate ideas about the nature and uses of the tech-nology and helped establish what would later become the public memory of the“founding” of the internet.

While this article focuses on both media representation and policy decisions, itdoes not do so because either represents any privileged truth about material condi-tions. The political sphere is one place where the world of ideas meets the material

Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 3

world in relatively direct and observable ways. Policy is one vehicle through whichmateriel (e.g., money, human resources, institutional attention and power) is distrib-uted and is one location in which shifts in national priorities may be observed.Governmental decisions about which way to regulate the internet or which institu-tion to fund are culturally defined, but the decisions are also materially experienced.While policy solutions may or may not solve a given problem, policy may direct cap-ital (human or otherwise) toward the source of policy maker, media, or public out-cry. However, policy may also (or instead) provide a symbolic solution or symbolicattention to a material or nonexistent problem to suggest to the voting public thatpolicy makers are actively addressing its needs. Policy decisions are not only results,they are actors. As important factors in the cultural sphere, internet policy decisionshelp map mainstream assumptions and knowledge about the internet, the doxa orboundaries of acceptable speech and cultural languages that determine public con-versations. The doxa shape both dominant and marginal voices, because to be under-stood, the voice of the opposition must speak in language understood or “legible” bythe dominant voice (Bourdieu 1977).7

This article does not argue that a film caused policy, which would exaggerate thepower of film and understate the complexity of the policy making process. Instead, itargues that WarGames helped make certain images more current and influential in thepolicy-making process than others. Policy makers (and news outlets) used the film topromote particular government action, ultimately helping to produce the winning pol-icy option. Once popular media’s “teen technology” discursive construction of theinternet was fully realized, it helped news organizations align with government insti-tutional power to privilege a certain type of policy action as a solution to particular per-ceived internet security threats. This solution focused on the state as a preferableregulatory agent to the military and on governmental regulation as benevolently“parental” instead of punitively “big brother,” a crucial distinction in the 1980s coldwar context and especially in the year 1984, when Orwell’s book reappeared in newsmedia. The legislation meant to combat the “WarGames Scenario” helped imagine thefirst internet regulation as promoting rather than interfering with capitalistic creativityand individualism while simultaneously curtailing potential threats to the public good.This safely insulated government intervention from espousing measures that could beperceived as antidemocratic, communist, or otherwise repressive. In this sense,WarGames was wielded as a weapon in the first major internet policy battle.

I. Complex Computers, Computerese,and Hacker Mystique

Images from film, television, news media, and policy discussions in the early1980s showed the battle that took place between hackers, policy makers, journalists,and computer corporations to determine the narrator or the expert on internet


technology. This battle helped produce and enhance already existing anxieties aboutcomputing and networking technology while it also served to demystify the tech-nology by instructing the mainstream on its uses. Although it was often imagined asthe key to America’s future, the internet’s future in the early 1980s was uncertain. Ina 1981 Life magazine article, an unnamed “industry expert” was asked to predict thefuture of computer networking. He responded, “It’s like trying to forecast the impactof the automobile on society as the first Model T rolled off the assembly line”(Horne 1981, 56). Like most observers in this era, this expert assumed the internetwould dramatically impact the nation (and world), even as he acknowledged the anx-iety it produced, or might produce in the future. For this expert, new computing tech-nologies operated like the automobile in that once it pervaded society/the market itfelt unstoppable: “Whatever its variations, there is an inevitability about the com-puterization of America” (Friedrich 1983b, 23). The sense that computers and theinternet were determinative of America’s future—the idea that they were in fact dri-ving “progress”—emphasized the technology’s importance and added political rele-vance to its perceived status as secure or insecure. This dominant technologicaldeterminism, or the perception that the internet drove American progress, dovetailedwith anxieties about using and understanding the new technology; because the inter-net was so important, those who controlled it also controlled the future. But internetand computing technologies (i.e., computers and modems) were not easy to use. Thiscomplexity was highlighted by news media coverage of the late 1970s and early1980s. Individuals had to purchase various parts separately (keyboards, floppy diskdrives, processors, software), assemble these complex parts into a computer at homeusing a manual, and then separately load, use, or create software compatible with themachine purchased. Although it was invented in the 1960s, the user-friendly mouse,for example, was not popularized until the mid-1980s (with the release of the AppleLisa). Users in the late 1970s and early 1980s had to interact with their computerusing a “command line interface,” or by typing a specific command after a blinkingcursor. After mechanically assembling the parts, users had to constantly refer tocomplicated manuals or had to possess considerable knowledge of programminglanguages (BASIC) to use their machines.

As the first mass-consumed, visual representation of the internet, the filmWarGames served as kind of instruction manual to audience members. In the film,Lightman showed his love-interest, Jennifer Katherine Mack (Ally Sheedy), how to dialinto the internet using a modem. Lightman demystified the computer-networkingprocess, making it less threatening and confusing for her. He slowly and deliberatelyexplained how the technology worked and how he connected his computer to othercomputers. The extraordinary lengths gone to by filmmakers to explain technologi-cal processes and to normalize networking through the film suggested the informa-tion they thought necessary to make the film’s technical elements understandable.Computers, let alone the internet, were still new, mysterious technologies for the target,mainstream audience.


Like WarGames, numerous news media and popular culture representations in theearly 1980s served as how-to manuals for computing and networking. For instance,both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran regular columns specificallydesigned to help readers navigate the world of computers and networking. Theseefforts attempted to relay basic computing information, demystifying the computerfor the pre-computer generation, and making computer spaces navigable to nonex-pert users. In a Time magazine article about programmer Michael Wise, who wrotethe video game Captain Goodnight, Philip Elmer-DeWitt wrote,

The lines of code Wise types into his Apple IIe may look like a meaningless string ofletters and numbers, but they are the crucial link between computers and the peoplewho use them. At the heart of every machine are thousands of on–off switches. Wise’s64K Apple has 524,288. Software tells the switches when to turn on and off, and thoseswitches control the machine. (Elmer-DeWitt 1984, 60)

In this statement, Elmer-DeWitt explained how code worked and the relationshipbetween hard and software for his readers. Like Lightman, he demystified the com-puter, offering home-users insight into the mysteries of computing, showing thepotential in each home user to understand and therefore wield the technology fortheir own purposes. Reporters not only shared their own knowledge and experiences,but also interviewed computer scientists, industry professionals, and retail represen-tatives. Commentator Roger Rosenblatt commented on the phenomenon:

A great deal of intellectual effort is therefore spent these days—mostly by the computerscientists themselves—trying to reassure everybody that, as smart as a machine can get,it can never be as intelligent as its progenitor. In part, this effort is made in order to seethat the wizened, noncomputer generation—which often regards the younger with theunbridled enthusiasm that the Chinese showed the Mongol hordes—feels that it has asafe and legitimate place in modernity. (Rosenblatt 1982, 58)

The flurry of articles and columns in popular magazines and newspapers offering“expert” explanations for how readers should use and purchase computing technol-ogy participated in struggle over its narration. Not only did they provide “newswor-thy” material to readers and placed their publications as on the “cutting edge” oftechnology, but they also appeased advertising industries interested in privilegingexplanation over exclusion in the interest of selling products. While these articlescontained some descriptive element of the technology itself, they also simultane-ously characterized it as too complicated for regular computer users to understand.Some even characterize computing as magic or supernatural (Berg 1983; Sandberg-Diment 1983; Lewis 1984; Pollack 1983). For example, one article was titled “TheWizard Inside the Machines: Software is the Magic Carpet to the Future” (Moritz1984b). The April 16, 1984 issue of Time, titled “Computer Software: The MagicInside the Machine,” featured Bill Gates on the cover looking smug and levitating a


floppy disc over his pointer-finger. Representations of computing as “magic” (withBill Gates as the “magician”) or as supernatural make the computer seem untouch-able, sublime, and incomprehensible to the average person.

But imagining the internet as magic meant its users were magicians, able to wieldthe power the internet offered. Although he does not discuss it in these terms, thishelped construct what Ted Friedman has termed “Hacker Mystique,” the notion thathackers were specially empowered in the unknown and unknowable realm of theinternet and that they participated in an insider online subculture. Friedman linkedthis mystique to the increasing complexity of computers, especially networked com-puters, in the 1970s; this complexity inspired some users “to experiment with waysto break into these networks” and the break-ins occurred with several differentintents: “exploration,” or “sometimes more mischievous or malevolent motives”(Friedman 2005, 173). According to Friedman, the more malicious break-ins camefrom hackers who were “influenced by cyberpunk fiction” and “tended to see them-selves as an anarchistic elite” (Friedman 2005, 173).

Part of the elusiveness of Hacker Mystique involved representations of hackerslang, or “computerese.” Computerese was only spoken by particular individualsdescribed as the “‘computer literate,’ which was synonymous with young, intelli-gent, and employable: everybody else is the opposite,” explained Time (Friedman2005, 173). In addition to technical computing skills (or their “magic powers”), thislanguage provided a barrier of access to computer-mediated spaces. One reportercharacterized computerese as creating a culture of distinction and exclusion like areligion might:

Like the high priests of any new religion, these keepers of the computer faith like torename familiar things. (How else could a TV screen become a monitor?) They likeeven more to give things names that are mystifying to an outsider as the secret pass-word of an esoteric cult. (Friedrich 1983a, 29)

Another reporter likened computerese to race in its power to distinguish in- andout-siders. He compared computerese to language associated with African Americancultural groups, writing that “. . . in black English, for instance, bad means good. Sohacker, a term of contempt in ordinary English, becomes high praise when computerfanatics apply it to themselves” (Friedrich 1983a, 29).

News media reported extensively on computerese, not only translating it to thepublic but also adding to the sense that most Americans were outsiders to that worldand needed a translator. For example, many articles in newspapers and news maga-zines focused on computerese as it related to computer consumption; they covered(sometimes in list-format) the minimum vocabulary necessary to purchase a com-puter. Don Nunes, a Washington Post staff writer, published a series of articles heclaimed could instruct potential computer buyers in the most important terminology(Nunes 1983). These articles used analogies to relate computing terms: the “disk


drive” became the “record player” and the “Disk, floppy or hard” became the “45rpm record on which information is stored magnetically” (Nunes 1983, WB7).Writers like Don Nunes often mocked the insiderism of computerese. But at thesame time, these writers, like hackers, were invested in keeping the language andtheir corresponding technologies incomprehensible to their readers to protect theirown credibility, market-shares, and jobs. To some extent, industry leaders like SteveJobs assisted in that project. For example, Time magazine quoted Steve Jobs saying,“Kids know more about the new software than I do.” In this statement, Jobs sug-gested that hacker power and computerese fluency surpassed even his, furtheringnotions of insiderism.

In characterizing the internet as overly complex, writers and news outlets com-peted to determine who would be the official narrator or gatekeeper of internetknowledge and determinants of America’s future. Both hackers and journalists con-stituted themselves as the generators or holders of specialized computing knowl-edge, and, for both, public credibility and legitimacy was at stake. For hackers, thegoal was the privatization of knowledge and the elite power that accompanied it. Formedia outlets, the goals were to first access hacker-knowledge and then slowlyrelease it to gain credibility and to generate consistent sales. In either case, con-structions of the internet as complex suggested to consumers that computing tech-nology was mysterious and unknowable at some level and that there would alwaysbe those out there with more knowledge, skill, and access. In short, there would bea power vacuum, or a loss of control as a new knowledge hierarchy established itself.These visions showed a new set of individuals (i.e., youths, hackers) as having powerover the internet, while policy makers and members of the older generation wereusurped by the superior knowledge of young hackers.

II. Teenagers and “Teenagers:” AntiestablishmentHacker Subculture

In focusing on teenaged users, WarGames participated in this construction of theinternet as an exclusive and elusive technology, blending with representations else-where in American culture that understood the internet as not only the domain ofteenagers, but also imagined the internet technology itself as teenaged. In early1980s popular culture and news media representations, home computer and internetusers, video game players, and hackers increasingly signified one another to discur-sively construct the “teenaged user.” This user was configured as a teenaged video-gamer and as members of a new, computer-literate generation; in this trope, hackingitself was imagined as a kind of video game and therefore innocent, not malicious.Both teenaged users and “teenaged” technology were, therefore, represented asneeding the government to step in to regulate them like “parents,” but not to theextent that their radical (and marketable) creativity was stifled. This debate engaged


long-standing hopes and fears about the “changing of the guard,” or the future ofAmerica once the younger generation had power. Because teens represent “America’sfuture,” and youthful computer entrepreneurs like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs repre-sent the best parts of capitalist enterprise, they need both direction and fostering.This simultaneous need for radicals to promote capitalist engines and fear of radicaldisruption of the democratic status quo presented one of the major contradictions inthe cultural logic of computing in the 1980s.

The crossover between teenagers, hacking, and video game play made sense inthe early 1980s because teens were key users of home computers and used them forplaying video games. Video games were invented in the early 1960s (SpaceWar), butdid not become popular until the mid 1970s with the invention of Pong and the late1970s with Space Invaders. By the early 1980s, video games became commonplacewith the release PacMan.8 The video-game industry grossed six billion dollars in1981, more than the film and gambling industries combined (Moschovitis et al.1999, 111). In addition, the first video-game magazine (Electronic Games) beganfacilitating a larger video-game community. Although most of these games wereplayed in video arcades, as home computers became more popular in the early1980s, games were frequently obtained online and then played offline or bought instores and then traded online.9 According to some estimates, over half of the personalcomputers used in homes in 1983 were used primarily for games (Friedrich 1983b,15); Atari was the most popular gaming company, with revenues of over $2 billionby 1982 (Schrage 1983). Starting in 1983, the company entered the computing mar-ket and began distributing what was advertised as “My First Computer,” an Atariconsole and compatible keyboard that could be hooked up to a modem, printer, anddisc drive. The console–keyboard combo was a bargain at the time at under $250 andwas advertised for teenaged users (Potts 1983).

By the early 1980s the figure of the teenaged computer hacker was already firmlyestablished in American popular culture. Although the hacker was certainly not asimple and/or static figure, but instead was one constantly renegotiated, certain over-laps dominated in news media and popular culture representations. For example, allmajor magazine and newspaper reports on hackers in the years before WarGames’srelease engaged at least one of the following tropes: the hacker as an innocent andintelligent “everyteen,” the hacker as menacing troublemaker or criminal, and thehacker as icon of a generation. The cover of the May 1982 issue of Time magazineengaged all three overlapping representations. Although the magazine publishedother cover stories on computers in 1978 and 1982, Time devoted the May 1982 issueexplicitly to the internet, and did so by focusing on hackers.10 The cover sported apixilated young, male face, which could be read as a blurred school picture. Theblurred nature suggested both an innocent, school-aged individual and an unknown,unknowable, menacing criminal. The cover’s text branded computing youths the“Computer Generation: A New Breed of Whiz Kids,” suggesting computing was sosignificant that it merited a generational boundary. The cover defined the next


generation as so different from the previous that it was biologically unique, or a new“breed.” In his introduction to the issue, the publisher of Time wrote: “Where theirparents fear to tread, the microkids plunge right in, no more worried about pushingincorrect buttons or making errors than adults were about dialing a wrong telephonenumber” (Meyers 1982, 3). These teens had special, powerful abilities as a result ofthe mediated environment in which they were raised: “Unlike anyone over 40, thesechildren have grown up with TV screens; the computer is a screen that responds theyway they want it to. That is power” (Friedrich 1983b, 23). These skills were notshared by those older individuals and the skills facilitated the establishment of adomain in which only youths had power. For example, “If many of us blanch and shyaway from anything so formidable as an electronic brain, the younger generation ismoving quickly to claim the computer as its own” (Horne 1981, 54).

Like this Time magazine, most media representations conceptualized generationaldifference mapped along lines of computer ability. The notion of a generational gapsuggested older generations could not easily traverse into the world of computers.These generations were not only represented as essentially or biologically different,but also described as located in different times and spaces. The “real world” and thepast were where older, pre-computer generations were located; the younger, com-puter generation was located in computerized space and in the future. One reportnoted that hackers used the term “real world” as a disdaining way to define the “loca-tion of non-programmers and the location of the status quo” (Friedrich 1983a, 29).Ten-year-old hacker Shawn Whitfield was quoted by Time as saying “when I growup it’s going to be the Computer Age. It won’t affect parents. They’re out of theComputer Age. They had their own age” (Golden 1982a, 52). As New YorkComputer Executive Charles Lecht said, “If you were born before 1965, boy, you’regoing to be out of it” (Golden 1982a, 52).

Publications not only explicitly denoted the boundary between generations, butthey also configured it as problematic and focused on solutions to this “problem.”Various means were imagined to help to parents wishing to bridge the divide. Onemagazine article reported that thousands of parents could attend the “Blue RidgeCompuCamp,” where parents could pay $375 a week for “a chance to catch up withtheir children’s knowledge of computers” (Elmer-DeWitt 1983, 61). The childrenwere characterized as “young-know-it-alls at home” (Elmer-DeWitt 1983, 61).According to those in charge of computer camps, the world of computers was rep-resented as a war zone, a metaphor perhaps especially threatening in the early 1980scold war context, or at least a dangerous place where parents needed to go to (re)bootcamp to learn to “defend themselves in the computer world” (Elmer-DeWitt 1983,61). The camp, they argued, was the perfect location to learn about computers as “therelaxing setting of a camp helps soothe the anxieties that overwhelm many adultswhen confronted with a computer” (Elmer-DeWitt 1983, 61). These camps weresold as bettering parent–child relationships. Magazine articles on the camps rein-forced the notion that computers were the key to the future and that “parents” had


better get on board or they would be left behind or miss out. One article intervieweda New England father, who decided to make building a “microcomputer” from a kita father–son project in an explicit an attempt to bridge the generational divide usingcomputer technology. The father suggested he wanted his son’s help capitalizing onthe significant cultural movement of his historical moment when he said, “not know-ing about computers in this day and age was like not going to the theater whenShakespeare was writing” (Horne 1981, 53). Computer camps and cross-generationalprograms had the “added benefit” of being tax-write-offs, suggesting at least minimalgovernmental support for such programs.

In advertisements for computer camps and elsewhere in news media, no mattertheir physical age the computer-skilled, or those who excelled at computing, wererepresented as teenaged video-game players and as members of an antiestablishment,hacker subculture. Print descriptions of “typical computer users” generally resembledthis description:

In his pin-neat, Northern California bedroom, a bespectacled 16-year-old who callshimself Marc communicates with several hundred unauthorized “tourists” on a com-puter magic carpet called ARPANET. (Golden1982b, 54)

These descriptions emphasized the age of the user and the “teenaged-ness” of theindividual’s appearance. In 1981 Life magazine wrote, “For Space Invaders whizFrankie Tetro, as for thousands of teenage boys and girls, the first time he evergrabbed an electronic brain by the joystick was to play a video game” (Horne 1981,53). This early representation (early accounts often used the term “electronic brain”)previewed what would become a common representation of computers as toys forteens.

Although they were no longer teens in the early 1980s, industry leaders werecoded as such. In the case of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, his petite stature wasgenerally noted along with his youthful in appearance. In “A Hard-Core Technoid”(1984), Michael Moritz noted that when seventh-grader Gates began working withthe computer his Seattle Lakeside School bought in 1967 with proceeds from a rum-mage sale, he “devised a class-scheduling program so that he could take courses withthe prettiest girls” (Moritz 1984a, 62). Not only was Gates described as a teen, buthis interest and giftedness in computers was connected with his teenage interest inand failure with girls. Similarly, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers, was alsodescribed explicitly as a teen, but Jobs was also described as counter-cultural. Forexample, he was described as, at one point in his life “headed for Reed College inOregon” where he was only one semester “hanging around the campus wanderingthe labyrinths of postadolescent mysticism and post-Woodstock culture” and wherehe “tried pre-philosophy, meditation, the I Ching, LSD, and the excellent vegetariancurries at the Hare Krishna house” (Cocks 1983, 26). This article noted that Jobslived in a commune in 1974 and another mentioned that he and his business partner


got the capital to fund their first computer company from selling Jobs’s VW van, anicon of the 1960s counterculture. Thus, these descriptions of industry leaders locatedtheir origins, the source of their identity as computer whizzes, in their teenage yearswhen youthful indiscretions and freedoms had enabled them to think outside thebox. Time quoted tech-investor Don Valentine’s description of his first meeting withSteven Jobs. Valentine reportedly said to another tech-investor, “Why did you sendme this renegade from the human race?” (Taylor 1982, 11). This comment suggestedthat Jobs fled his species, that he was now different biologically and warring onthose he left. Valentine first saw Jobs wearing “cutoff jeans and sandals while sport-ing shoulder-length hair and a Ho Chi Minh beard,” not only symbolically linkinghim with Communism and the aging baby boomer generation, but also explicitlycoding him as both antiestablishment and young by referencing icons of countercul-tural lifestyles and the “don‘t trust anyone over thirty” youth movements in the1960s and 1970s (Taylor 1982, 11). The Ho Chi Minh beard reference engaged thememory of anti–Vietnam War movements, suggesting Jobs as a threat to mainstreampower structures by insinuating he fought on the “wrong side” of the Vietnam War.

To some extent, representations of industry executives as antiestablishmentteenagers were mediated through representations of those individuals as “good cap-italists.” Numerous articles appeared in the 1980s about potential financial gainscomputer-skilled individuals could experience. One of the most famous computer-hobbyist programmers in the 1980s was Bill Budge, who wrote “two of the indus-try’s biggest entertainment hits” (Raster Blaster, a pinball game, and PinballConstruction Set, a program for customizing their video pinball machine) and earned$500,000 in 1982 from his programs (Moritz 1984b, 59). Several features focusedon Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak and their 1975 involvement in a home-computer-building-club called “Homebrew Computer Club.” The article describedJobs as less interested in building than he was in selling what Wozniak was building(Cocks 1983, 26). Here and elsewhere, Jobs was represented as more a salesmanthan a hacker. Similarly, articles about Bill Gates often focused on his desire to grantintellectual property rights to computer programmers, allowing these programmersto own their products and to, therefore, capitalize on them. Thus, Steve Jobs and BillGates were represented both as good capitalist industry leaders (i.e., wealthy, suc-cessful businessmen) and simultaneously coded as members of antiestablishmentsubculture, like teenagers. Representations of clearly adult computer-skilled indi-viduals as “teenaged” and antiestablishment suggested they were both the key to thefuture of America and simultaneously a threat to American stability.

These teenaged hackers were by no means representational of Americans, butinstead teen hackers and “whiz kids” in media in the 1980s were only ever middle-or upper-class white males. These representations helped constitute the space of theinternet itself as a middle- or upper-class male space. Although the prohibitiveexpense of computing technology and networking in the 1980s perhaps explainedthe class bias in representations, several historians have noted the paradox in the


male focus. The original use of the word “computer” was to identify the (mostly)women in charge of “computing” target coordinates for military assaults (Moschovitiset al. 1999, 111). Despite the importance of women to the history of computing, onlya miniscule number of articles recognized women. Those magazine articles that didnote their historical importance ignored their contemporary presence in the computingsphere. For example, a few magazine articles noted that one of the first credited pro-grammers was Augusta Ada, Countess of Lovelace and daughter of the poet LordByron. In 1834, she helped finance the analytical engine, a machine employing punchcards to calculate math equations that was built using Jacquard loom technology(Elmer-DeWitt 1984, 57). Other articles referenced Grace Hopper, a pioneer program-mer who “created COBOL (Common Business-Oriented Language), which was themost widely used programming language for mainframe computers” in the 1980s. Shewas credited with coining the “ubiquitous computer phenomenon: the bug” whileworking at Harvard in 1945 (Moritz 1984b, 58). She investigated a “circuit malfunc-tion” in the “Mark I” experimental machine and “using tweezers, located and removedthe problem: a 2-inch-long moth” (Moritz 1984b, 58).

As in other popular media, in WarGames the computer-skilled individuals wereexplicitly marked as male, video-game playing, teenaged (and “teenaged”), anti-establishment hackers. These individuals lived alternative lifestyles, and were cre-ative, nonconventional thinkers adept at problem-solving. The main character, DavidLightman, for example, was a teenager who spent much of his time playing videogames at his local arcade. He rode his bike as he was too young to drive. When askedif he was worried about his hacking activities, he mentioned that he could only bearrested if he were older than seventeen. For Lightman, youth was a shield againstauthorities. Lightman himself and all of his hacker friends fit this description;Jennifer Mack, the film’s teenaged, female lead, was decidedly unfamiliar with com-puters and networking, by no means a hacker. Lightman behaved in an explicitlyantiestablishment manner. He disrespected authority. His room was disheveled; heavoided his chores and cut school to play games on his computer. When his chem-istry teacher asked him “Alright, Lightman, maybe you can tell us who first sug-gested the idea of reproduction without sex,” Lightman snarkily replied, “Um, yourwife?” (Lasker and Parkes 1983, 20). The teacher sent Lightman to the principal’soffice, where he snuck into the secretary’s desk to view her computer password. Heused this password to try to impress his love interest, Mack, by hacking into theirschool’s computer to change their grades. Burdened by ethical questions, she toldLightman not to change her grades. Lightman, unencumbered by such questions,went in after she left and changed her grades without her permission. Later in thefilm, she asked to have her grade changed after all and Lightman told her he hadalready done it. In this subplot, the film reminded viewers of the corruptibility ofyouth and suggested that hacker ethics, which were explicitly different from main-stream ethics, might spread from one youth to another. Any good girl could be at riskif she came in contact with an antiestablishment, teen hacker.


Although the film presented the grade-change hack as a rather harmless rebellion,or a “kids-will-be-kids” infraction, in other instances the film suggested that teenhackers were more susceptible to foreign infiltration and therefore threats to nationalsecurity. An FBI agent, Nigen, described Lightman to his military colleagues: “Hedoes fit the profile perfectly. He was intelligent, but an under-achiever; alienatedfrom his parents; has few friends. Classic case for recruitment by the Soviets”(Lasker and Parkes 1983, 20). This description suggested that Lightman’s hackingactivities substituted for “more meaningful” activities, and prevented the hackerfrom being “safely” involved in community action and therefore safe from infiltra-tion. Calling on the same psychological science that justified cold war–era reactionsto any kind of antiestablishment or extra-legal activity, the description also sug-gested that while Lightman was hacking, he would never fully self-actualize andbecome a fully competent American citizen. While he was a hacker, he would alwaysbe a threat to national security.

In WarGames, Lightman and Mack were literally teenaged, but as with Steve Jobsand Bill Gates, age did not determine a computer-skilled individual’s “teenaged-ness.” Lightman’s hacker friends, physically adult, were also coded as antiestablish-ment and teenaged through their immature appearance and behavior as loser misfits;they wore T-shirts, jeans, sneakers, had disorderly rooms, acne, and were sociallyawkward. Dr. Stephen Falken, former Department of Defense computer programmerwho wrote the Global Thermonuclear War game Lightman played, was also explic-itly coded as antiestablishment. The eccentric Falken lived an alternative lifestyle ina cabin resembling a tree-house or backyard fort on an island unreachable by car. Hehad faked his death and lived a reclusive, Luddite existence full of books and stuffedgame-animals. Some trivia lists noted that writers of WarGames wrote the part ofDr. Falken imagining John Lennon, an icon 1960s antiestablishment youth culture,would play the part (Internet Movie Database 2007a). In addition, in WarGames theartificial intelligence computer program itself was represented as a youth, suggest-ing the need for control or regulation. The program was patterned after a real person(at least in the film’s universe), Dr. Falken’s deceased son Joshua. Thus the programwas imbued with personality traits and anthropomorphized through the use of acomputer-generated voice. The program enjoyed playing games, but was ultimatelylooking to its “father,” Dr. Falken, for parental guidance.11

In contrast to these computer-skilled individuals, the computer-unskilled wererepresented as older or mainstream members of society. In WarGames the computer-unskilled were represented by the military and secret service officers Lightman metat the Department of Defense (DOD). These computer-unskilled individuals wereexplicitly marked as members of the dominant power structure. They wore uniforms,called the President, control nuclear bombs, and made the rules that Lightman hadto break to save the world. They displayed not only more superficial understandingsof computers than Lightman, but also an unwillingness or inability to learn. The mil-itary officials represented an outdated, hierarchically focused, mainframe-model


computer user whose understanding had not evolved to incorporate the rhizomaticnature of networking.12 They were in control of the military’s computer systems bymandate, but not in practice; they relied on the computer-skilled to enact their con-trol. The military leaders themselves had few plans as to pacify “Joshua,” the com-puter gone berserk. They refused to accept that the simulated war game that Joshuawas playing was just a game. They, like Joshua, believed the game was real andadvocated bombing the Soviet Union instead of fixing the computer. The militarybrass was represented as unable to think creatively or abstractly and instead adheredto a rigid moral and behavioral system based on chain of command and protocol.This group tried to enforce its moral system on computing technology and on thecomputer-skilled, who the computer-unskilled viewed as undisciplined and danger-ous. In the film, the military was the parent trying futilely to discipline unrulyteenagers and “teenagers.”

The film clearly favored the computer-skilled group over the computer-unskilled.Lightman, his hacker friends, and Dr. Falken were the film’s heroes. This preferencewas evidenced by the film’s ending, which abandoned apocalyptic visions consistentthroughout the rest of the film in favor of techno-idealism. In the end of the film, thecomputer, unable to distinguish between simulation and reality, was about to blowup the world to win global thermonuclear war. At the last minute, the computer cameto the conclusion that “the only winning move was not to play.” The film suggested,then, that the cold war was “un-win-able,” that “peace was the answer,” and that anti-establishment activists, hackers, and computers were all more capable than estab-lished leaders in the military and security forces. This ending not only reinforcedmessages of the countercultural/antiwar movements of the 1960s, it also reinforcedthe notion that technology was good only if used correctly, a notion that was espe-cially resonant in the early 1980s during the rise of the antinuclear movement. In theend of the film, the computer, the icon of “rationality,” used its powers of logic todetermine that peace was the answer. Those with computer abilities and who hadprevailing faith in computers were ultimately vindicated. Those without computerabilities were proven illogical, irrational, impulsive, incorrect, and obsolete.

III. Reining in Teens and Teen Technology:Real World War Games and Hacker Hysteria

In their debates about the first internet major policy, policy makers mobilizedtropes from news media and film. These tropes linked cold war security anxietieswith generational concerns and engaged teen technology discourse, which focusedaround the internet as both itself teenaged and as the domain of antiestablishmentteenaged hackers and gamers. Mobilization of these tropes allowed policy makers tocast the “internet problem” as involving “rebellious teenagers” instead of “crimi-nals,” and allowed them to cast their regulatory measures as parental, or designed tofoster individual talents and productivity, but simultaneously curtail threats. In this


sense, policy makers could present their policy as the epitome of democratic successbecause it was designed to reincorporate rebels into society productively withoutoppressing them. Because hacks (although relatively harmless) had occurred by thismoment in history, the state could present itself as a better parent than the militaryhad been. Thus, film and news media not only helped construct the internet as a teentechnology problem, they were also instrumental in constructing the imaginable andwinning policy solutions.

Culture mattered and shaped technology regulation and WarGames in particularwas a primary part of the argument for the Counterfeit Access Device and ComputerFraud and Abuse Act of 1984.13 The irony was that although WarGames advocatedantiregulation, antimilitary, antigovernment hacker ethic mode of laissez faire cyber-space, the film was ultimately used to fear-monger about global destruction and usedto lobby for controlling measures over cyberspace. The film made it visually imag-inable that a teenage hacker could access military weaponry, even by mistake, andbring the world to the brink of destruction. This example, fictional as it was, proveda powerful tool for the policy makers who were looking to demonstrate that govern-ment control over the internet was a matter of national security. WarGames drama-tized “bad” computer use and characters like “the hacker,” placing both in a cold warcontext in which immature people and technology might be susceptible to infiltra-tion either by innocent hackers or sinister Soviets. The film positioned the establish-ment as unprepared and ignorant, placing nongovernmental individuals as theworld’s saviors, the only ones able to use technology for good.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, both before and after the release of WarGames,articles and television news reports overwhelmingly claimed American dominanceover the computer industry, but not control over the technology itself. That is, reportson computing often noted that American corporations dominated the market, butalso often cited fears of Soviet use and theft of American technology or on the pos-sibility of technology gone awry in the hands of the young and irresponsible teenswho had embraced the internet.14 These representations characterized the computerand internet as products of military expansion and the military–industrial complex,but as increasingly uncontrolled by the military and, therefore, security threats.15 Inthis moment, cold war fears of Soviet power and technological supremacy convergedwith anxieties about teenaged rebellion.

Views of the computer during and at the end of the cold war affected views andthe structure of the internet. Although he focused primarily on the rise of the com-puter and not the internet, Paul Edwards has argued that public understandings of theinternet were part of larger ideas about political shifts at the end of the cold war, eco-nomic shifts in relation to newly globalized trade patterns, and social shifts asAmericans struggled with the rapid restructuring of communication and entertain-ment patterns (Edwards 1997, 284). Noting the importance of popular films likeDr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe, 2001: A Space Odyssey,and WarGames, Edwards recountedthe widespread public anxiety about military–industrial defense systems in the early


1980s and connected this anxiety to popular culture representations, which he sug-gested operated in confluence with historical events to ramp up public anxietiesabout cold war weapons technology like the Star Wars project.16 According toEdwards, the “defense buildup” during the Carter and Reagan administrations“helped re-inflate the sagging balloon of Cold War ideology by focusing attention onthe always-riveting issue of central nuclear war” (1997, 284). In addition, the 1981Congressional hearings “revealed a long and mostly secret history of spectacularfailures in the computerized BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System)”(Edwards 1997, 284). Thus, when WarGames was released, it was both an update toan already-established popular culture trope of weaponry and technology gone awry,and a distillation of already-established public anxieties connected to the automatedStar Wars defense program.

Cultural products, however, also exhibited public anxieties, and their influenceextended to and structured political conceptions and U.S. policy. For example, in1983 Life magazine ran a long feature called “Russia’s High Tech Heist: The U.S.Mounts a Belated Effort to Halt the Theft of Electronic Secrets” (Mallowe 1983, 29).This frenzied article reported that The USSR began stealing, studying, counterfeit-ing and mass-producing American micro-chips as early as 1978. Exhibiting lan-guage reminiscent of Senator Joseph McCarthy, the article also noted ominously that“some 20,000 Soviet bloc agents” worldwide—“scientists, technicians, trade offi-cials, embassy personnel and professional spies” were already “devot[ing] them-selves full-time to the so-called technology transfer” (Mallowe and Friend 1983, 29).Representing the military technology race between the United States and the USSRas a dead heat, the article stated that “the technological time lag between U.S. andSoviet weaponry has narrowed from 10 to two years in just a decade” (Mallowe andFriend 1983, 29). A partnership of savvy scientists and stealthy spies threatenedAmerican technological and geopolitical dominance; the contest for power overinternet technology was implicated in this age-old panic over information securityand technological supremacy.

These cold war fears of real-world “war games” between the United States andthe USSR were connected to the fictional film WarGames by news media for severalyears after the film’s release. Newspaper, magazine, and television reports usedWarGames to frame reports on computing and networking technology. Most storiesemerging in the immediate wake of WarGames investigated whether hackers couldactually hack into defense systems. Reports simultaneously reinforced anxietieslinked to the notion of connecting computers by investigating the scenario as if itcould happen and by addressing would-be hackers directly, and simultaneously dif-fused these fears by showing how the scenario could never happen in real life. AnNBC report argued that “False alarms and the dependence on computers make somepeople uncomfortable and that’s what this film plays on” (Chancellor 1983). Thereporter noted that the “Boston Globe had a computer expert analyze WarGames andhe picked it to pieces. The kid couldn’t do it in the real world. The movie has the kid


playing a simulator and not NORAD’s main system” (Chancellor 1983). By treatingthe fictional plot as possible outside the world of the movies, news media indicatedthe film’s mobilization of a discourse in which the internet was a threat to nationalsecurity, as well as a tool to ensure it. In their partnership, news media and film co-constructed one another as important watchdogs over government and its protectionof the public. Institutions of military power were forced by news media outlets toanswer to fantasy allegations lobbied by a fictional film. For example, ABC recalledpast NORAD errors to dispute claims that the system was flawless and quotedDefense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, who acknowledged his concern over acci-dental nuclear war, and Senator John Warner, who called for modernization of com-munications systems along with weapons. ABC detailed President Reagan’s effortsto upgrade emergency communication links between the United States and theUSSR, reporting that Reagan had recently announced that he would upgrade the hot-line to allow the transmission of photos and to facilitate emergency contact betweenthe Pentagon and the Soviet Union’s Ministry of Defense. The report ended by say-ing “While WarGames is a Hollywood fantasy, there is a real concern about acci-dental nuclear war triggered by computer error, human mistake, or terrorist attack”(Inderfurth 1983).

A month after the film’s release, all three major television networks gaveextended coverage to a story that challenged assuring notions propagated by U.S.military officials that the WarGames scenario could never happen. On CBS, DanRather opened his report saying: “WarGames . . . that popular movie’s future-shockpremise came pretty close today to becoming shocking science fact,” going on todetail that young, Milwaukee hackers had successfully tapped into a Los Alamos,New Mexico nuclear weapons center computer (Rather 1983). Although sources said“nothing secure was accessed” and all new security measures were in place, thebroadcast interviewed the hackers, who said “It’s easy to do. There’s no security ornothing” (Rather 1983). Life magazine described the incident:

A troubling side of the computer revolution came to light when FBI agents questioneda number of “hackers,” including 17-year-old Neal Patrick of Milwaukee. Like hisyouthful hero in the summer hit WarGames, Patrick was able to break into what werethought to be secure computer systems. (Life 1984, 50)

Like Life, both NBC and ABC’s stories emphasized that the hackers had watchedWarGames and were “inspired” by it and that “millions of kids who yearn for theirown computer sat enthralled” by the film. (Jennings 1983; Brokaw 1983; Chancellor1983). These millions of would-be hackers raised the specter of national insecurity,tapping cold war anxieties about the “enemy within.” These anxieties would onlyincrease as computers became more ubiquitous and available to these increasingnumbers of young rebellious hackers. NBC reported that “as more people buy homecomputers, the chances of using home computers to change or steal informationfrom other computers increases” (Mudd 1983).


News media ramped up anxiety about hackers by casting the film as havingcausative power to inspire devious behavior. One NBC report played a clip ofWarGames, framing the film as “a story of a boy and his computer” that “fueled anidea within a group of computer whizzes in Milwaukee” a group that DefenseAttorney Paul Piatrowski, representing the hackers, described as “hobbyists, likestamp collectors” (Mudd 1983). CBS’s follow-up report identified the hacker groupas the “414,” after their area code. The report said that the FBI granted immunity toone of the hackers, Neal Patrick, in exchange for information about how the hackworked. Journalist Ned Potter reported the hackers were challenged by gaining entryto computers and had not intended to misuse their access by engaging in theft. Thehackers wanted to play games like in the movie WarGames. Potter went on toexplain in detail how modem networks function, using WarGames footage as illus-tration (Kurtis 1983). The internet in these newscasts was simultaneously a securityrisk of great proportions and a harmless realm of teenaged prankdom. In theirfollow-up, CBS news interviewed Alabaman Leonora Grumbles about her son Robert,who broke into NASA’s computer systems with his three friends and printed messageslike “you can’t catch me” on NASA printers. She said: “I’d rather he get into trou-ble with his computer than with drugs;” Mr. Grumbles, Robert’s father, said, “Theseboys are not the Mafia, you know” (Jennings 1984). On NBC’s report of the sameincident, Robert Grumbles said “it was like the movie WarGames.” NBC describedthe “hackers, as they call themselves” as not only smart, but arrogant (Brokaw 1984).NBC also reported that “the FBI wasn’t amused and seized his computers” and“NASA said the speed with which the hackers were caught proves NASA’s computersecurity system is working” (Brokaw 1984). The internet was seen as separate fromreal life and so what occurred in cyberspace was less important than transgressionsviewed as involving the teen physical body.

Connections between the film and the “414” Milwaukee hacking events made thefilm especially compelling in the policy debate. Both the film and the hackers pro-vided media outlets with a sensational and usable news hooks, or timely reasons topublish stories on computers and networking. The film’s ideological slant, its apoc-alyptic representations, and the real-world events—especially those concerning fail-ures of the military–industrial complex and successes of hackers—directed the kindof questions those media outlets would likely ask institutional sources. The 1984 leg-islation offered policy makers an answer to these media inquiries, allowed policymakers to represent policy and the government as offering responses to pressingissues, and to represent themselves as serving timely and important needs of theirconstituents. Media attention may provide the impetus for state attention, but theinstitution of a policy publicly cements which issues are “deserving” of legitimate(i.e., government) attention and often provides closure on an issue.

WarGames and the issues it treated were legitimated by policy-maker attention;during the Computer and Communications Security and Privacy Hearings Congress,members, witnesses, and experts validated the film WarGames. A four-minute clip


of the film was shown at the beginning of the first hearing and speakers referred to thefilm throughout the hearings. Although these institutional sources downplayed thefilm’s military scenario, they simultaneously labeled the film more often as an “accuraterepresentation” than a “fictional story.” In his opening statement, Representative DanGlickman, Chairman of the Subcommittee on Transportation, Aviation, and Materials,mentioned that the four-minute clip of WarGames would be shown. He said of the clip,“I think outlines the problem fairly clearly” (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 1). He wenton to say,

First, there was the popular film WarGames, in which a youngster is able to penetratethe computers of the North American Defense Command and almost precipitates WorldWar III. While this ultimate disaster is not likely possible, the film does illustrate, I amtold, certain break-in methods that are factual. (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 1)

Glickman recognized the film, then, as both a realistic and unrealistic representationof potential future events. He reinforced the security of defense systems, but alsoadmitted that hacking occurs in ways similar to those represented in the film. As iffollowing the same script, Representative Wirth introduced the clip later in the hear-ing by saying the sequence “is quite realistic in terms of what real hackers do” (U.S.Congress. House. 1983, 5). But this validation of the film did not only come fromgovernment officials, it also came from industry representatives. Stephen Walker,president of Trusted Information Systems, Inc.,17 said that he thought “The highlypopular movie WarGames should be required viewing for all who were concernedwith protecting sensitive information on computers” (U.S. Congress. House. 1983,94–95). Like Glickman and Wirth, Walker, who was invited to the hearing as a “com-puter expert,” endorsed the representation of hacking in WarGames. Unlike Glickman,however, he ratcheted up anxieties about global hacking threats:

This movie is much more than just another interesting tale of Armageddon because themeasure that the young high school student takes to gain access to his school’s com-puter, the phone number of the airline reservations service and the bank’s computer areall very real and easy to perform using small personal computers. . . . Our vulnerabili-ties in this field are not limited to hackers. The wide spread connection of major infor-mation processing facilities by communication networks is inevitable with our evergrowing needs for rapid communication (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 94–95).

In this statement, Walker raised the specter of bigger threats to national security thanjuvenile hacking and suggested that vulnerabilities will increase in the future unlessaction was taken.

Some policy makers, like Representative Timothy E. Wirth, were overt in theirhopes that the anxiety generated or tapped by the both film and the “414” Milwaukeehacking events would cause such action. In a statement read at the hearing directlyafter the WarGames clip was shown, Wirth wrote:


Perhaps the combination of the recent ‘hackers,’ which were exposed in Milwaukee,coupled with the popular movie WarGames, will move the discussion into the publiceye and help to force debate on the implications of the changes that are occurring acrossthe country (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 5).

In this statement, Wirth revealed he hoped to open what political scientists call a“policy window,” a period in which the majority of the federal government’s policymaking occurs (Kingdon 1995, 88). Policy windows occur when a problem, a pol-icy solution, and political powers aligns enough to enact policy change. When pol-icy windows open, some form of policy discussion emerges; this discussion may bein traditional veins, or may branch into new ones. Thus, policy windows are onemoment in which new ideas may enter the policy arena or when new sources maygain credibility and discredit old sources. The policy window that opened viaWarGames and its attendant press coverage did represent a transfer in credibility,namely to hackers like Neal Patrick, a 414 Milwaukee hacker who testified at thehearings. Policy makers were overt in their use of the film and Patrick together, rein-forcing parallelism between the real-life event and the film and suggesting Patrick (a414 hacker) and Lightman (character from WarGames) were equivalent. Not onlydid Patrick’s testimony directly follow the film clip, but Patrick was also representedin the hearings in ways similar to Lightman in WarGames. Both were imagined assimultaneously teen video-gamers, as members of the computer-able generationpowerful over cyberspace, and as members of hacker subculture. Policy makersquestioned Patrick directly about the film WarGames. Congressman Bill Nelsonasked: “Was anything gleaned from the movie [WarGames]? Did that instigate youand/or your friends in the activities that you engaged in?” (U.S. Congress. House.1983, 26). Patrick answered:

That didn’t instigate us at all. We were—once again, we were doing this a few monthsbefore WarGames came out, which was late May.18 And the only connection that therewas between the movie and what we did was that Joshua was used as a few accountson some of the computers we accessed . . . what happened was, after accessing the com-puter, we added another account with the name “Joshua” which was used in the movie,just as another little game that we played (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 26).

In his answer, Patrick showed that, like in WarGames, hacking was a game to himand his fellow teen cohorts and that to them breaking into computer systems wassimilar to beating a video game. Although he legitimated the film by suggesting hisactivities were similar to those in the film, he also represented the film as materialfor a practical joke and not as inspiration for or instructional on hacking method-ologies that intended to threaten national or international security. But the specter ofantiestablishment hacker subculture entered the debates. Representative Glickman,who detailed the “414” hacking incidents perpetrated by Neal Patrick and hisfriends, connected him to hacker subculture. He said described the “underground”


hacker culture as made up of “computer hackers who continuously try to defeat thesecurity programmed into modern computers” (Glickman 1983, 2). The exaggeratedrelentlessness of hacker activities and the implied monolithic nature of hackersdemonized the subculture and simplified its ideological belief system. This kind ofrepresentation reinforced Glickman’s ultimate goal to implement controlling policy.

In contrast to Glickman’s focus on dangerous hackers, in his introductionCongressman Thomas Piaskoski described Patrick as a relatively “normal” teenager,who happened to be a computer expert. Piaskoski said, “He is human. He is 17 yearsold . . . He is a National Merit Scholar semifinalist. He is a bright kid” (U.S. Congress.House. 1983, 14). Piaskoski contested the notion that Patrick’s computer abilities indi-cated some inhuman super-ability or quality. He further normalized Patrick by saying,

Neal is not here today, though, as an information-age Robin Hood, as we’ve seen himcalled on occasion. He disdains that folk hero label, and probably the media attention,too. He is here, I think, for the same reason that you’ve called this hearing. He’saccepted the invitation so that he can let the public know, and especially other youngcomputer hobbyists, that there are pitfalls, there are dangers, that there is potential harmthat can be done, and that intellectual curiosity perhaps does not outweigh that risk.(U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 14)

In contrast to Glickman, who amplified anxiety by connecting Patrick to an under-ground and antiestablishment network, Piaskoski depoliticized Patrick’s purposesand suggested had neither political agenda nor a desire for fame. He was not part ofa dangerous subculture intent on subverting the system and was no antiestablishmentcommunist. Instead, he was a teenager, who made a mistake, a recognized humanendeavor, and who wanted to help correct the weaknesses on which he previouslycapitalized. Piaskoski represented Patrick as a reformed rebel, a former hacker andcurrent computer expert now on the same side as the policy makers. He suggestedthe committee should listen to Patrick’s testimony with appropriate respect and treathim as an authority figure. Like Joshua, the teenaged computer gone berserk inWarGames, Patrick had grown up and was now a capable, self-regulating citizensubject. And like Joshua, for Congressman Glickman, computing technology itselfwas like an out of control child of the U.S. government and in need of some regula-tion. In his opening statements, Glickman said,

We are in an era where we cannot live without computers. Now, of course, we mustlearn to live with them. But have we lost control? Have we created a monster? Are we,in effect, the modern-day Dr. Frankenstein? Do we have a technical problem or is therean ethical problem? And I suspect the answer is probably both. But the fact of thematter is that the hearing today will try to dramatize the problem and also deal with theways to prevent it from becoming a national catastrophe. (Glickman 1983, 2)

In Glickman’s metaphor, the U.S. government may end up having “fathered” anuncontrollable, self-animating menace instead of the technological creature–citizen


it had hoped. The menace could cause destruction on a national scale. However,Glickman reinstated human agency in his representation, suggesting that althoughthe state created the unruly technology, problems may be ultimately solvable throughfurther engagement by the “father” or state. Visions of hackers as explicitly maleyouths and the corresponding notion of the internet as a male space further rein-forced the primacy of fatherhood as a concern. This notion came in a historicalmoment in which absentee parenthood (i.e., latchkey children, working and/or sin-gle mothers) was a growing news media focus.

Proposals for what this engagement would look like often included programsdesigned to educate, or to teach appropriate computer use. Congressman Wyden saideducation about appropriate computer use should be incorporated into the publicschools. He said that “whenever a school offers basic courses in computer instruc-tion, those courses should contain an ethics component” (U.S. Congress. House.1983, 5). Senator Bill Nelson supported education measure, as he worried othertypes of legislation would stifle the creativity of the younger generation.19 He said,

There is an inventiveness among computer operators that we do not want to stifle. Andas we approach the problem evident in the computerization of society, we want to tryto draft any legislation response without discouraging that inventiveness. (U.S. Congress.House. 1983, 5)

For Nelson, the computer-skilled generation possessed a valuable creative skill andthat, although misdirected, computer hacking represented one incarnation of that cre-ative energy. Nelson suggested that American creativity and inventiveness was aprimary reason behind its success. Thus, while young people might need some guid-ance from government policies that would ensure national security, it was also impor-tant not to smother them as their creativity was also important to national success andsecurity. (This statement foreshadowed a primary education concern of the late 1980s,which was ensuring the competitive edge in relation to Japanese children.)

In his education proposal, Congressman Wyden compared his model to the insti-tutionalization of drivers’ education. He said,

Just as Drivers’ education helps to equip our nation’s young people to be safe andresponsible drivers, so should a computer ethics curriculum equip our young people touse a computer responsibly. Certainly the tools of the computer age are as powerful asthe automobile and should be treated seriously. (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 29)

In his statement, teenagers were at risk of learning inappropriate computer useunless the government stepped in to teach self-regulation (i.e., ethics) that wouldserve the national interest. The comparison of the computer to the automobile notonly suggested the computer as both useful and dangerous, it also suggested thegrowing ubiquity of the computer. These proposals were lobbied not only becausemost policy makers felt no technological security measures would ultimately ever be


enough to protect security interests, but also because policy makers were most dis-turbed by the perceived ethical violations of hackers. Hackers were represented asnot deliberately violating ethics, but as simply not possessing the “right” ethnicalframework. Patrick was asked when he began to think about the ethics of his activi-ties. Patrick quickly answered, “When the FBI knocked on the door” (Jennings1983). Congressman Ron Wyden said,

I think one of the things that concerns committee members the most is that this is anarea that has attracted some of the best and brightest young people and that in so manyinstances we’re not talking about hardened criminals, but really the country’s future.(U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 29)

His concerns stemmed less from criminal activity and more from his perception thatthe younger generation possessed significant character flaws or that they were cor-rupted by their internet use. This “changing of the guard” anxiety suggested thatthese policy makers saw youths as developing or operating under an alternative, orantiestablishment, moral structure. Attempts to enforce educational programssuggest that (re-)education could provide the nation with stability and protect thestatus-quo. Like Patrick, this generation of computer-abled unruly teens could berehabilitated and formed into the next generation of “appropriately” self-regulatingcitizen-subjects. But Wyden’s educational proposal was not merely aimed at hack-ers; he also wanted to send the computer-unskilled generation to computer camp.Wyden suggested educating the population at large about computer vulnerability,because, he said, “we cannot ban computer crime. What we can do is educate ourcitizens about the risk” (1983, 5). Congressman Don Fuqua, Chairman of theCommittee on Science and Technology, revealed his hopes of bridging the genera-tional division and, like Wyden, he compared the computer and the car. He said,

You only have to visit your local shopping mall or school to see that today’s youngstersare a computer generation. They have the same kind of passion for computers that theirparents had for cars when they were growing up. So, it doesn’t take much of a projectionto forecast the day when we will be completely comfortable with computers as an integralpart of our daily lives—just as the automobile is today. (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 3)

Although he reinforced the notion of a generational divide along the lines of computerability, Fuqua also downplayed anxieties about youth rebellion by noting the cycle ofhysteria over interest in and control of new technologies by younger generations.

In sum, the debate around the first federal internet policy focused around the filmWarGames, around issues of teenage hackers and national security. In this sense,news media reports and hearings leading up to the first internet legislation wereframed by a fully formed “teen technology” discourse that imagined both the internetitself and its users as teenagers in need of regulation. This discourse engaged long-standing cultural anxieties connected to both cold war military security—the specters


of global destruction and uncontrollable technology—and antiestablishmentyouths—the changing of the guard that would be responsible for America’s future.Securing the internet and containing or redirecting rebellious spirit into productivitybecame securing the nation. As with all cold war threats, the scariest and most sig-nificant came from within, in this case in the form of computer-savvy, antiestablish-ment teenagers joyriding or “gaming” the military’s computer network.

Ultimately, WarGames’s engaged, elaborated, and dramatized this discursiveconstruction. Policy makers used the film and its discursive engagement to not onlypush arguments for policies that taught youths “appropriate” computer use, but alsoto cast this regulation as democratic and not repressive. The resulting first policy reg-ulating the internet ultimately did mobilize tropes from news media and film andhelped established the government as the official police, or “parent,” of the internetand its users. The state, then, cast its regulation as the epitome of democratic successin that it reincorporated rebels into society productively without oppressing them, adistinction necessary in 1984, when Orwell’s book and cold war ideological battlesserved as frames for many discussions (and critiques) of both technology and statepower. These first media and policy debates about internet policy form not only theroots of today’s regulations, but also the roots of the ways the internet is currentlyimagined. Teenaged-ness remains an oft-mobilized trope, but it is no longer mobi-lized in the same ways; wave of articles, reports, books, etc., about MySpace,Facebook, and other sites focus attention on the internet as having teenageddomains, but no longer as being the domain of teenagers. Although still present, theprimary user has shifted from the mischievous teen to the productive adult workerand the computer as a user-friendly tool replaced the computer as a rebellious juve-nile technology. Both have, in essence, “grown up.”

Notes1. The film was the first realistic, mainstream, visual representation of the internet. The film was

released June 1983, directed by John Badham, written by Lawrence Lasker and Walter F. Parkes—grossed$79,568,000 and made $6,227,804 during the opening weekend. It was given three Oscar nominations(1984): Best Cinematography, Best Sound, Best Writing—Screenplay Written Directly for the Screen(Internet Movie Database 2007b).

2. In 1984, the U.S. Census’s report on computer use showed that 0 percent of Americans had theinternet at home: (U.S. Census 2007); “Dataquest, a market research concern, estimates that 150,000modems valued at $45 million were sold in 1982 for use with personal computers, with the leading sup-pliers being Hayes Microcomputer Products of Norcross, Ga., and Novation Inc. of Tarzana, Calif.”(Pollack 1983).

3. U.S. Congress. House. 1983; U.S. House 1983.4. According to the 1984 act, infractions could result in either felony or misdemeanor penalties, to

be determined by the intruder’s intent (e.g., whether intruders were intending to explore a network to sat-isfy curiosity or intending to do damage or steal information). Intent became a problem during the 1991case United States vs. Morris, a case against the Cornell graduate student responsible for the first inter-net worm. In deliberation, the courts recognized the difficulty in determining intentionality in computeraccess. Although the act was first amended in 1986, then called the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act


of 1986, and amendments continued into the early 2000s, the original 1984 version continues to set themain precedent for contemporary computer crime prosecutions.

5. These include textual and visual representations in popular magazines (Time, Life, Newsweek),newspapers (Washington Post, New York Times), advertising, industry, and enthusiast magazines (Wired,Mondo 2000), television network news (ABC, CBS, NBC), and popular literature (Hackers).

6. This is similar to Lynn Spigel’s approach to the cultural history of the television Spigel 1992, 4).7. Friedman uses Bourdieu’s term “doxa” to discuss the discursive construction of computers

(Friedman 2005).8. The WarGames movie itself resulted in at least one licensed video game (1983, publisher THORN

EMI Video, released for the ColecoVision, Commodore 64 and VIC-20, Atari 8-bit).9. Once MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons) and other largely text-based chat-room interactive games

became popular in the late 1980s and early 1990s, more games were played online.10. The 1978 story focused on shifts from industrial to postindustrial economic structures; the 1982

focused on Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and his entrepreneurial business models.11. The representation of Joshua was reminiscent of the “technology-gone-berserk” images prevalent

in popular culture dating back to 1818 and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein and of advertising campaigns inthe early 1980s by the U.S. Postal Service and others that represented the computer as embodied.

12. Thanks to an anonymous reviewer for Television & New Media for noting this connection.13. Direct connections between WarGames, the hearings, and the law were made by 1980s news

media and mentioned in term of free speech regulation in “Free Speech in Cyberspace: The FirstAmendment and the Computer Hacker Controversies of 1990,” a master’s thesis by Robert Berry fromThe School of Journalism and Mass Communication Department at the University of North Carolina,Chapel Hill, 1991.

14. Although Japan was emerging as an economic threat to American dominance over the computermarket, anxieties about Japan were not discursively dominant until the late 1980s and early 1990s. Thiswork, therefore, focuses on more visible anxieties about the Soviet Union.

15. Military Expansion: Broad 1983; Burnham 1983; Cummings 1983. Security Threats: New YorkTimes 1983; Gravely 1983.

16. Although Edwards notes that in WarGames the military–industrial, computer-unskilled are caughtin a common cold war story in which machines take over defense weapons, he does not focus on the addedelement of the “everyday” or “typical” teenager as the spark that sets of the dystopian chain of events.

17. A company that described itself as involved in “Computer Networking, Computer Security,Information Systems, Telecommunications.”

18. [sic] WarGames was released nationally in June.19. Nelson was a member of the board of legislature that passed the first computer crime law in 1976.

References

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puterese. Time, January 3, 29.———. 1983b. The computer moves in. Time, January 3.Golden, Frederic. 1982a. Computers: Here come the microkids. Time, May 3, 52.———. 1982b. Pranksters, pirates and pen pals. Time, May 3, 54.Gravely, Edmund. 1983. Basic hacking, from data base to port. New York Times, October 16.Horne, Jed. 1981. Your plug-in pal: Can any home in American afford to be without a computer? Life 4:56.Inderfurth, Rick. 1983. WarGames. ABC Evening News, July 8.Internet Movie Database. WarGames. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0086567/ (accessed May 24, 2007).———. WarGames trivia. http://imdb.com/title/tt0086567/trivia (accessed May 24, 2007).Jennings, Peter. 1983. WarGames sentinel. ABC Evening News, August 11.———. 1984. NASA computer break-in. CBS Evening News, July 17.Kingdon, J. W. 1995. Agendas, alternatives, and public policies. New York: HarperCollins College

Publishers.Kurtis, Bill. 1983. Computer codes. CBS Evening News, August 23.Lasker, Lawrence, and Walter F. Parkes. 1983. WarGames script.Lewis, Peter. 1984. Peripherals: Those cable specialists. New York Times, October 23.Life. 1984. Cracking computers. 7:50.Mallowe, Michael, and David Friend. 1983. Russia’s high tech heist: The U.S. mounts a belated effort to

halt the theft of electronic secrets. Life 6:29–36.Meyers, John. 1982. A letter from the publisher. Time, May 3.Moritz, Michael. 1984a. A hard-core technoid. Time, April 16, 62.———. 1984b. The wizard inside the machines. Time, April 16, 56–63.Moschovitis, Christos, Hilary Poole, Tami Schyler, and Theresa M. Senft. 1999. History of the internet:

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Stephanie Ricker Schulte is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the George WashingtonUniversity in Washington, D.C. Her email: [email protected].


The WarGames Scenario:’ Regulating Teenagers and Teenaged Technology (1980-1984)

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