Television & New Media Volume XX Number X Month XXXX xx-xx © 2008 Sage Publications “The WarGames Scenario” 10.1177/1527476408323345 http://tvnm.sagepub.com hosted at Regulating Teenagers and Teenaged http://online.sagepub.com Technology (1980–1984) Stephanie Ricker Schulte George Washington University WarGames (1983), the first mass-consumed, visual representation of the internet, served as 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 a weapon for global destruction. In its wake, major news media focused on potential realities of the “WarGames Scenario.” In response, Congress held hearings, screened WarGames, and produced the first internet-regulating legislation. WarGames engaged a “teenaged technology” discourse, which cast both internet technology itself and its users as rebellious teenagers in need of parental control. This discourse enabled policy makers to equate government internet regulation with parental guidance rather than with suppression of democracy and innovation, a crucial distinction within 1980s cold war context. Thus, this article historicizes the internet as a cultural text, examining how technology and its regulation shaped and were shaped by cultural representations. Keywords: internet; film; politics; history; teenagers; WarGames F rom his bedroom sanctuary, David Lightman (Matthew Broderick) used his home 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 teenaged computer-hacker, Lightman spent much of his life exiled in his locked room, unsu- pervised by his parents, playing on his home computing system. Unmotivated by high school academic and extracurricular activities, Lightman taught himself to use a modem to connect with other computers and ultimately unintentionally hacked into the Pentagon’s defense system.1 Although Joshua, the military’s computer, uttered its eerily monotone warning “Wouldn’t you prefer a nice game of chess?” Lightman impatiently pressed on, replying “Let’s play Global Thermonuclear War.” Assuming he was playing an unreleased videogame, Lightman engaged a realistic war-simulation program, commanding missiles and tactical maneuvers that nearly brought the United States and Soviet Union to nuclear war. A critically acclaimed and immensely popular film, WarGames grossed nearly $80 million and was nominated for four Author’s Note: Thanks to Melani McAlister, Laura Cook Kenna, Julie Passanante Elman, Kyle Riismandel, Laurel Clark, Bret Schulte, and Television & New Media’s anonymous reviewer for their insightful comments on previous drafts of this project. 1 2 Television & New Media Academy Awards, and, for most Americans, the movie was their first “experience” with the internet.2 Although WarGames famously concluded that the “only winning move” in Global Thermonuclear War was “not to play,” legislators felt they were forced 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 fictional plot, dubbed the “WarGames Scenario,” could actually happen. The three major tele- vision networks aired a flurry of television reports using WarGames as a frame for understanding 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. ABC broadcasted a famous clip from the 1964 satire in which an Air Force pilot rode a nuclear 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 (North American Aerospace Defense Command), introducing the film as: “Another movie about nuclear madness . . .” (Inderfurth 1983). Not only did this pairing suggest a parallel between the teen hacker and the cold war cowboy, but it also connected the modem and the nuclear bomb. The report investigated whether a computer or simu- lation could accidentally trigger World War III. In an interview with ABC reporter Rick Inderfurth, NORAD Spokesperson General Thomas Brandt claimed checks and balances systems prevented computer errors of the magnitude portrayed in WarGames. In these systems, Brandt reassured viewers, “man is in the loop. Man makes decisions. At NORAD, computers don’t make decisions” (Inderfurth 1983). Like ABC, in the weeks after WarGames’ release NBC fretted over the film’s “scary authenticity,” noting that military computers “occasionally go wrong” (Chancellor 1983). Ultimately, NBC confidently addressed “all you computer geniuses with your computers and modems and auto-dialers” taunting them to “give up,” assuring potential Lightman copycats, “There’s no way you can play global thermonuclear war 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 computer security in both the Senate and House and by showing excerpts of the film WarGames at the opening of the hearings.3 These hearings ultimately resulted in the nation’s first comprehensive legislations about the internet and the first ever federal legislation on computer crime: the Counterfeit Access Device and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984 (P.L. 98–473, 98 Stat. 2190), enacted in October 1984 and commonly referred to as the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act (CFAA), hoped to make computer networks more secure by making illegal unauthorized access to any gov- ernment computers, accessing national defense, foreign relations, or credit-related information.4 The Act remains the precedent for American regulatory internet policy.  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 3 In this sense, WarGames served as both a vehicle and a framework for the first widespread 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 global destruction. 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 in American culture since the 1960s—cold war military expansion and antiestablish- ment youth culture—thereby blending cold war panic about global destruction with festering 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, the film portrayed hacking as an innocent rebellion rather than a malicious actable and helped produce the internet itself and the internet’s primary users as teenaged. In turn, the government was produced and produced itself as a stern but fair “parent” to these teenagers and “teenagers,” fostering their development rather than inhibiting their growth. Although this “teen technology” discourse emphasized the internet and its users as potentially dangerous, it also viewed both as key to a potentially bright future, if they could be effectively domesticated. Unsupervised young hackers like Broderick’s character in WarGames were dangerous to domestic security, but if their generation’s technological skills could be drafted in the fight against the Soviet Union or in the interest of the American economy, they could serve as a potentially useful and powerful democratizing force. In the wake of War Games, emerging poli- cies hoped to teach youths socially appropriate computer use that would allow them to direct their entrepreneurial spirit into approved channels in service to the forces of American capitalism. This article has two goals: first, it shows how 1980s U.S. internet policy decisions must be understood in the context of a larger and emerging set of cultural under- standings, particularly of the film WarGames and its surrounding news media debate.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 and popular cultural history.6 Second, this article contributes to a larger understanding of the cultural and political history of the internet, as both a material technology and a discursive construction. Although home computer ownership surged in the late 1970s and early 1980s, modem use did not. As a result, in the early 1980s most Americans learned about the internet through popular culture, like WarGames, and news 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, it does 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 4 Television & New Media world in relatively direct and observable ways. Policy is one vehicle through which materiel (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 symbolic attention to a material or nonexistent problem to suggest to the voting public that policy makers are actively addressing its needs. Policy decisions are not only results, they are actors. As important factors in the cultural sphere, internet policy decisions help map mainstream assumptions and knowledge about the internet, the doxa or boundaries 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” by the dominant voice (Bourdieu 1977).7 This article does not argue that a film caused policy, which would exaggerate the power of film and understate the complexity of the policy making process. Instead, it argues that WarGames helped make certain images more current and influential in the policy-making process than others. Policy makers (and news outlets) used the film to promote particular government action, ultimately helping to produce the winning pol- icy option. Once popular media’s “teen technology” discursive construction of the internet 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 preferable regulatory agent to the military and on governmental regulation as benevolently “parental” instead of punitively “big brother,” a crucial distinction in the 1980s cold war context and especially in the year 1984, when Orwell’s book reappeared in news media. The legislation meant to combat the “WarGames Scenario” helped imagine the first internet regulation as promoting rather than interfering with capitalistic creativity and individualism while simultaneously curtailing potential threats to the public good. This safely insulated government intervention from espousing measures that could be perceived 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 early 1980s showed the battle that took place between hackers, policy makers, journalists, and computer corporations to determine the narrator or the expert on internet  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 5 technology. This battle helped produce and enhance already existing anxieties about computing and networking technology while it also served to demystify the tech- nology by instructing the mainstream on its uses. Although it was often imagined as the key to America’s future, the internet’s future in the early 1980s was uncertain. In a 1981 Life magazine article, an unnamed “industry expert” was asked to predict the future of computer networking. He responded, “It’s like trying to forecast the impact of 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 internet would 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 it felt unstoppable: “Whatever its variations, there is an inevitability about the com- puterization of America” (Friedrich 1983b, 23). The sense that computers and the internet 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 technological determinism, or the perception that the internet drove American progress, dovetailed with anxieties about using and understanding the new technology; because the inter- net was so important, those who controlled it also controlled the future. But internet and computing technologies (i.e., computers and modems) were not easy to use. This complexity was highlighted by news media coverage of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Individuals had to purchase various parts separately (keyboards, floppy disk drives, processors, software), assemble these complex parts into a computer at home using a manual, and then separately load, use, or create software compatible with the machine 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 Apple Lisa). Users in the late 1970s and early 1980s had to interact with their computer using a “command line interface,” or by typing a specific command after a blinking cursor. After mechanically assembling the parts, users had to constantly refer to complicated manuals or had to possess considerable knowledge of programming languages (BASIC) to use their machines. As the first mass-consumed, visual representation of the internet, the film WarGames served as kind of instruction manual to audience members. In the film, Lightman showed his love-interest, Jennifer Katherine Mack (Ally Sheedy), how to dial into the internet using a modem. Lightman demystified the computer-networking process, making it less threatening and confusing for her. He slowly and deliberately explained how the technology worked and how he connected his computer to other computers. 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. 6 Television & New Media Like WarGames, numerous news media and popular culture representations in the early 1980s served as how-to manuals for computing and networking. For instance, both the Washington Post and the New York Times ran regular columns specifically designed to help readers navigate the world of computers and networking. These efforts attempted to relay basic computing information, demystifying the computer for the pre-computer generation, and making computer spaces navigable to nonex- pert users. In a Time magazine article about programmer Michael Wise, who wrote the video game Captain Goodnight, Philip Elmer-DeWitt wrote, The lines of code Wise types into his Apple IIe may look like a meaningless string of letters and numbers, but they are the crucial link between computers and the people who use them. At the heart of every machine are thousands of on–off switches. Wise’s 64K Apple has 524,288. Software tells the switches when to turn on and off, and those switches control the machine. (Elmer-DeWitt 1984, 60) In this statement, Elmer-DeWitt explained how code worked and the relationship between hard and software for his readers. Like Lightman, he demystified the com- puter, offering home-users insight into the mysteries of computing, showing the potential in each home user to understand and therefore wield the technology for their 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 computer scientists 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 see that the wizened, noncomputer generation—which often regards the younger with the unbridled enthusiasm that the Chinese showed the Mongol hordes—feels that it has a safe 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” of technology, but they also appeased advertising industries interested in privileging explanation over exclusion in the interest of selling products. While these articles contained 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 “The Wizard Inside the Machines: Software is the Magic Carpet to the Future” (Moritz 1984b). The April 16, 1984 issue of Time, titled “Computer Software: The Magic Inside the Machine,” featured Bill Gates on the cover looking smug and levitating a  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 7 floppy disc over his pointer-finger. Representations of computing as “magic” (with Bill 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 wield the power the internet offered. Although he does not discuss it in these terms, this helped construct what Ted Friedman has termed “Hacker Mystique,” the notion that hackers were specially empowered in the unknown and unknowable realm of the internet and that they participated in an insider online subculture. Friedman linked this mystique to the increasing complexity of computers, especially networked com- puters, in the 1970s; this complexity inspired some users “to experiment with ways to break into these networks” and the break-ins occurred with several different intents: “exploration,” or “sometimes more mischievous or malevolent motives” (Friedman 2005, 173). According to Friedman, the more malicious break-ins came from 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 hacker slang, or “computerese.” Computerese was only spoken by particular individuals described as the “‘computer literate,’ which was synonymous with young, intelli- gent, and employable: everybody else is the opposite,” explained Time (Friedman 2005, 173). In addition to technical computing skills (or their “magic powers”), this language provided a barrier of access to computer-mediated spaces. One reporter characterized computerese as creating a culture of distinction and exclusion like a religion might: Like the high priests of any new religion, these keepers of the computer faith like to rename familiar things. (How else could a TV screen become a monitor?) They like even 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- and out-siders. He compared computerese to language associated with African American cultural groups, writing that “. . . in black English, for instance, bad means good. So hacker, a term of contempt in ordinary English, becomes high praise when computer fanatics apply it to themselves” (Friedrich 1983a, 29). News media reported extensively on computerese, not only translating it to the public but also adding to the sense that most Americans were outsiders to that world and 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 he claimed could instruct potential computer buyers in the most important terminology (Nunes 1983). These articles used analogies to relate computing terms: the “disk 8 Television & New Media drive” became the “record player” and the “Disk, floppy or hard” became the “45 rpm record on which information is stored magnetically” (Nunes 1983, WB7). Writers like Don Nunes often mocked the insiderism of computerese. But at the same time, these writers, like hackers, were invested in keeping the language and their corresponding technologies incomprehensible to their readers to protect their own credibility, market-shares, and jobs. To some extent, industry leaders like Steve Jobs 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, furthering notions 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 internet knowledge 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, the goal was the privatization of knowledge and the elite power that accompanied it. For media outlets, the goals were to first access hacker-knowledge and then slowly release 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 always be those out there with more knowledge, skill, and access. In short, there would be a 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 power over the internet, while policy makers and members of the older generation were usurped by the superior knowledge of young hackers. II. Teenagers and “Teenagers:” Antiestablishment Hacker Subculture In focusing on teenaged users, WarGames participated in this construction of the internet as an exclusive and elusive technology, blending with representations else- where in American culture that understood the internet as not only the domain of teenagers, but also imagined the internet technology itself as teenaged. In early 1980s popular culture and news media representations, home computer and internet users, 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, hacking itself was imagined as a kind of video game and therefore innocent, not malicious. Both teenaged users and “teenaged” technology were, therefore, represented as needing the government to step in to regulate them like “parents,” but not to the extent that their radical (and marketable) creativity was stifled. This debate engaged  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 9 long-standing hopes and fears about the “changing of the guard,” or the future of America once the younger generation had power. Because teens represent “America’s future,” 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 radical disruption of the democratic status quo presented one of the major contradictions in the cultural logic of computing in the 1980s. The crossover between teenagers, hacking, and video game play made sense in the early 1980s because teens were key users of home computers and used them for playing video games. Video games were invented in the early 1960s (SpaceWar), but did not become popular until the mid 1970s with the invention of Pong and the late 1970s with Space Invaders. By the early 1980s, video games became commonplace with the release PacMan.8 The video-game industry grossed six billion dollars in 1981, more than the film and gambling industries combined (Moschovitis et al. 1999, 111). In addition, the first video-game magazine (Electronic Games) began facilitating a larger video-game community. Although most of these games were played in video arcades, as home computers became more popular in the early 1980s, games were frequently obtained online and then played offline or bought in stores and then traded online.9 According to some estimates, over half of the personal computers 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 billion by 1982 (Schrage 1983). Starting in 1983, the company entered the computing mar- ket and began distributing what was advertised as “My First Computer,” an Atari console and compatible keyboard that could be hooked up to a modem, printer, and disc drive. The console–keyboard combo was a bargain at the time at under $250 and was advertised for teenaged users (Potts 1983). By the early 1980s the figure of the teenaged computer hacker was already firmly established in American popular culture. Although the hacker was certainly not a simple and/or static figure, but instead was one constantly renegotiated, certain over- laps dominated in news media and popular culture representations. For example, all major magazine and newspaper reports on hackers in the years before WarGames’s release engaged at least one of the following tropes: the hacker as an innocent and intelligent “everyteen,” the hacker as menacing troublemaker or criminal, and the hacker as icon of a generation. The cover of the May 1982 issue of Time magazine engaged all three overlapping representations. Although the magazine published other cover stories on computers in 1978 and 1982, Time devoted the May 1982 issue explicitly to the internet, and did so by focusing on hackers.10 The cover sported a pixilated young, male face, which could be read as a blurred school picture. The blurred 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 so significant that it merited a generational boundary. The cover defined the next 10 Television & New Media 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 their parents fear to tread, the microkids plunge right in, no more worried about pushing incorrect buttons or making errors than adults were about dialing a wrong telephone number” (Meyers 1982, 3). These teens had special, powerful abilities as a result of the mediated environment in which they were raised: “Unlike anyone over 40, these children have grown up with TV screens; the computer is a screen that responds they way they want it to. That is power” (Friedrich 1983b, 23). These skills were not shared by those older individuals and the skills facilitated the establishment of a domain in which only youths had power. For example, “If many of us blanch and shy away from anything so formidable as an electronic brain, the younger generation is moving quickly to claim the computer as its own” (Horne 1981, 54). Like this Time magazine, most media representations conceptualized generational difference mapped along lines of computer ability. The notion of a generational gap suggested 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 the past were where older, pre-computer generations were located; the younger, com- puter generation was located in computerized space and in the future. One report noted 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 grow up it’s going to be the Computer Age. It won’t affect parents. They’re out of the Computer Age. They had their own age” (Golden 1982a, 52). As New York Computer Executive Charles Lecht said, “If you were born before 1965, boy, you’re going to be out of it” (Golden 1982a, 52). Publications not only explicitly denoted the boundary between generations, but they 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. One magazine article reported that thousands of parents could attend the “Blue Ridge CompuCamp,” where parents could pay $375 a week for “a chance to catch up with their children’s knowledge of computers” (Elmer-DeWitt 1983, 61). The children were 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 1980s cold war context, or at least a dangerous place where parents needed to go to (re)boot camp 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 “the relaxing setting of a camp helps soothe the anxieties that overwhelm many adults when confronted with a computer” (Elmer-DeWitt 1983, 61). These camps were sold 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  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 11 better get on board or they would be left behind or miss out. One article interviewed a New England father, who decided to make building a “microcomputer” from a kit a father–son project in an explicit an attempt to bridge the generational divide using computer technology. The father suggested he wanted his son’s help capitalizing on the 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 when Shakespeare was writing” (Horne 1981, 53). Computer camps and cross-generational programs had the “added benefit” of being tax-write-offs, suggesting at least minimal governmental support for such programs. In advertisements for computer camps and elsewhere in news media, no matter their physical age the computer-skilled, or those who excelled at computing, were represented as teenaged video-game players and as members of an antiestablishment, hacker subculture. Print descriptions of “typical computer users” generally resembled this description: In his pin-neat, Northern California bedroom, a bespectacled 16-year-old who calls himself 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 the individual’s appearance. In 1981 Life magazine wrote, “For Space Invaders whiz Frankie Tetro, as for thousands of teenage boys and girls, the first time he ever grabbed 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 for teens. Although they were no longer teens in the early 1980s, industry leaders were coded as such. In the case of Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, his petite stature was generally noted along with his youthful in appearance. In “A Hard-Core Technoid” (1984), Michael Moritz noted that when seventh-grader Gates began working with the 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 with the prettiest girls” (Moritz 1984a, 62). Not only was Gates described as a teen, but his interest and giftedness in computers was connected with his teenage interest in and failure with girls. Similarly, Steve Jobs, founder of Apple Computers, was also described explicitly as a teen, but Jobs was also described as counter-cultural. For example, he was described as, at one point in his life “headed for Reed College in Oregon” where he was only one semester “hanging around the campus wandering the labyrinths of postadolescent mysticism and post-Woodstock culture” and where he “tried pre-philosophy, meditation, the I Ching, LSD, and the excellent vegetarian curries at the Hare Krishna house” (Cocks 1983, 26). This article noted that Jobs lived in a commune in 1974 and another mentioned that he and his business partner 12 Television & New Media got the capital to fund their first computer company from selling Jobs’s VW van, an icon of the 1960s counterculture. Thus, these descriptions of industry leaders located their origins, the source of their identity as computer whizzes, in their teenage years when youthful indiscretions and freedoms had enabled them to think outside the box. Time quoted tech-investor Don Valentine’s description of his first meeting with Steven Jobs. Valentine reportedly said to another tech-investor, “Why did you send me this renegade from the human race?” (Taylor 1982, 11). This comment suggested that Jobs fled his species, that he was now different biologically and warring on those 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 linking him with Communism and the aging baby boomer generation, but also explicitly coding him as both antiestablishment and young by referencing icons of countercul- tural lifestyles and the “don‘t trust anyone over thirty” youth movements in the 1960s and 1970s (Taylor 1982, 11). The Ho Chi Minh beard reference engaged the memory of anti–Vietnam War movements, suggesting Jobs as a threat to mainstream power structures by insinuating he fought on the “wrong side” of the Vietnam War. To some extent, representations of industry executives as antiestablishment teenagers were mediated through representations of those individuals as “good cap- italists.” Numerous articles appeared in the 1980s about potential financial gains computer-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 Pinball Construction Set, a program for customizing their video pinball machine) and earned $500,000 in 1982 from his programs (Moritz 1984b, 59). Several features focused on Jobs and his partner Steve Wozniak and their 1975 involvement in a home- computer-building-club called “Homebrew Computer Club.” The article described Jobs 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 salesman than a hacker. Similarly, articles about Bill Gates often focused on his desire to grant intellectual property rights to computer programmers, allowing these programmers to own their products and to, therefore, capitalize on them. Thus, Steve Jobs and Bill Gates were represented both as good capitalist industry leaders (i.e., wealthy, suc- cessful businessmen) and simultaneously coded as members of antiestablishment subculture, like teenagers. Representations of clearly adult computer-skilled indi- viduals as “teenaged” and antiestablishment suggested they were both the key to the future of America and simultaneously a threat to American stability. These teenaged hackers were by no means representational of Americans, but instead 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 the internet itself as a middle- or upper-class male space. Although the prohibitive expense of computing technology and networking in the 1980s perhaps explained the class bias in representations, several historians have noted the paradox in the  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 13 male focus. The original use of the word “computer” was to identify the (mostly) women in charge of “computing” target coordinates for military assaults (Moschovitis et al. 1999, 111). Despite the importance of women to the history of computing, only a miniscule number of articles recognized women. Those magazine articles that did note their historical importance ignored their contemporary presence in the computing sphere. 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 Lord Byron. In 1834, she helped finance the analytical engine, a machine employing punch cards 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 the most widely used programming language for mainframe computers” in the 1980s. She was credited with coining the “ubiquitous computer phenomenon: the bug” while working at Harvard in 1945 (Moritz 1984b, 58). She investigated a “circuit malfunc- tion” in the “Mark I” experimental machine and “using tweezers, located and removed the problem: a 2-inch-long moth” (Moritz 1984b, 58). As in other popular media, in WarGames the computer-skilled individuals were explicitly 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, David Lightman, for example, was a teenager who spent much of his time playing video games at his local arcade. He rode his bike as he was too young to drive. When asked if he was worried about his hacking activities, he mentioned that he could only be arrested if he were older than seventeen. For Lightman, youth was a shield against authorities. 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 explicitly antiestablishment manner. He disrespected authority. His room was disheveled; he avoided 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, your wife?” (Lasker and Parkes 1983, 20). The teacher sent Lightman to the principal’s office, where he snuck into the secretary’s desk to view her computer password. He used this password to try to impress his love interest, Mack, by hacking into their school’s computer to change their grades. Burdened by ethical questions, she told Lightman not to change her grades. Lightman, unencumbered by such questions, went in after she left and changed her grades without her permission. Later in the film, she asked to have her grade changed after all and Lightman told her he had already done it. In this subplot, the film reminded viewers of the corruptibility of youth 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 risk if she came in contact with an antiestablishment, teen hacker. 14 Television & New Media 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 teen hackers were more susceptible to foreign infiltration and therefore threats to national security. An FBI agent, Nigen, described Lightman to his military colleagues: “He does fit the profile perfectly. He was intelligent, but an under-achiever; alienated from his parents; has few friends. Classic case for recruitment by the Soviets” (Lasker and Parkes 1983, 20). This description suggested that Lightman’s hacking activities substituted for “more meaningful” activities, and prevented the hacker from being “safely” involved in community action and therefore safe from infiltra- tion. Calling on the same psychological science that justified cold war–era reactions to any kind of antiestablishment or extra-legal activity, the description also sug- gested that while Lightman was hacking, he would never fully self-actualize and become a fully competent American citizen. While he was a hacker, he would always be a threat to national security. In WarGames, Lightman and Mack were literally teenaged, but as with Steve Jobs and 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 socially awkward. Dr. Stephen Falken, former Department of Defense computer programmer who wrote the Global Thermonuclear War game Lightman played, was also explic- itly coded as antiestablishment. The eccentric Falken lived an alternative lifestyle in a cabin resembling a tree-house or backyard fort on an island unreachable by car. He had faked his death and lived a reclusive, Luddite existence full of books and stuffed game-animals. Some trivia lists noted that writers of WarGames wrote the part of Dr. Falken imagining John Lennon, an icon 1960s antiestablishment youth culture, would play the part (Internet Movie Database 2007a). In addition, in WarGames the artificial 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 program was imbued with personality traits and anthropomorphized through the use of a computer-generated voice. The program enjoyed playing games, but was ultimately looking to its “father,” Dr. Falken, for parental guidance.11 In contrast to these computer-skilled individuals, the computer-unskilled were represented as older or mainstream members of society. In WarGames the computer- unskilled were represented by the military and secret service officers Lightman met at the Department of Defense (DOD). These computer-unskilled individuals were explicitly marked as members of the dominant power structure. They wore uniforms, called the President, control nuclear bombs, and made the rules that Lightman had to break to save the world. They displayed not only more superficial understandings of computers than Lightman, but also an unwillingness or inability to learn. The mil- itary officials represented an outdated, hierarchically focused, mainframe-model  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 15 computer user whose understanding had not evolved to incorporate the rhizomatic nature of networking.12 They were in control of the military’s computer systems by mandate, 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 Joshua was playing was just a game. They, like Joshua, believed the game was real and advocated bombing the Soviet Union instead of fixing the computer. The military brass was represented as unable to think creatively or abstractly and instead adhered to 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 the computer-skilled, who the computer-unskilled viewed as undisciplined and danger- ous. In the film, the military was the parent trying futilely to discipline unruly teenagers 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 preference was evidenced by the film’s ending, which abandoned apocalyptic visions consistent throughout the rest of the film in favor of techno-idealism. In the end of the film, the computer, unable to distinguish between simulation and reality, was about to blow up the world to win global thermonuclear war. At the last minute, the computer came to 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 reinforced messages of the countercultural/antiwar movements of the 1960s, it also reinforced the 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 the end of the film, the computer, the icon of “rationality,” used its powers of logic to determine that peace was the answer. Those with computer abilities and who had prevailing faith in computers were ultimately vindicated. Those without computer abilities 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 mobilized tropes from news media and film. These tropes linked cold war security anxieties with generational concerns and engaged teen technology discourse, which focused around the internet as both itself teenaged and as the domain of antiestablishment teenaged hackers and gamers. Mobilization of these tropes allowed policy makers to cast the “internet problem” as involving “rebellious teenagers” instead of “crimi- nals,” and allowed them to cast their regulatory measures as parental, or designed to foster individual talents and productivity, but simultaneously curtail threats. In this 16 Television & New Media sense, policy makers could present their policy as the epitome of democratic success because it was designed to reincorporate rebels into society productively without oppressing them. Because hacks (although relatively harmless) had occurred by this moment in history, the state could present itself as a better parent than the military had been. Thus, film and news media not only helped construct the internet as a teen technology problem, they were also instrumental in constructing the imaginable and winning policy solutions. Culture mattered and shaped technology regulation and WarGames in particular was a primary part of the argument for the Counterfeit Access Device and Computer Fraud and Abuse Act of 1984.13 The irony was that although WarGames advocated antiregulation, antimilitary, antigovernment hacker ethic mode of laissez faire cyber- space, the film was ultimately used to fear-monger about global destruction and used to lobby for controlling measures over cyberspace. The film made it visually imag- inable that a teenage hacker could access military weaponry, even by mistake, and bring the world to the brink of destruction. This example, fictional as it was, proved a 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 war context 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 the world’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 dominance over the computer industry, but not control over the technology itself. That is, reports on computing often noted that American corporations dominated the market, but also 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 teens who had embraced the internet.14 These representations characterized the computer and internet as products of military expansion and the military–industrial complex, but as increasingly uncontrolled by the military and, therefore, security threats.15 In this moment, cold war fears of Soviet power and technological supremacy converged with anxieties about teenaged rebellion. Views of the computer during and at the end of the cold war affected views and the 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 the internet 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 as Americans struggled with the rapid restructuring of communication and entertain- ment patterns (Edwards 1997, 284). Noting the importance of popular films like Dr. Strangelove, Fail-Safe, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and WarGames, Edwards recounted the widespread public anxiety about military–industrial defense systems in the early  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 17 1980s and connected this anxiety to popular culture representations, which he sug- gested operated in confluence with historical events to ramp up public anxieties about cold war weapons technology like the Star Wars project.16 According to Edwards, the “defense buildup” during the Carter and Reagan administrations “helped re-inflate the sagging balloon of Cold War ideology by focusing attention on the always-riveting issue of central nuclear war” (1997, 284). In addition, the 1981 Congressional hearings “revealed a long and mostly secret history of spectacular failures in the computerized BMEWS (Ballistic Missile Early Warning System)” (Edwards 1997, 284). Thus, when WarGames was released, it was both an update to an already-established popular culture trope of weaponry and technology gone awry, and a distillation of already-established public anxieties connected to the automated Star Wars defense program. Cultural products, however, also exhibited public anxieties, and their influence extended to and structured political conceptions and U.S. policy. For example, in 1983 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 USSR as a dead heat, the article stated that “the technological time lag between U.S. and Soviet weaponry has narrowed from 10 to two years in just a decade” (Mallowe and Friend 1983, 29). A partnership of savvy scientists and stealthy spies threatened American technological and geopolitical dominance; the contest for power over internet technology was implicated in this age-old panic over information security and technological supremacy. These cold war fears of real-world “war games” between the United States and the USSR were connected to the fictional film WarGames by news media for several years after the film’s release. Newspaper, magazine, and television reports used WarGames to frame reports on computing and networking technology. Most stories emerging in the immediate wake of WarGames investigated whether hackers could actually hack into defense systems. Reports simultaneously reinforced anxieties linked to the notion of connecting computers by investigating the scenario as if it could 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. An NBC report argued that “False alarms and the dependence on computers make some people uncomfortable and that’s what this film plays on” (Chancellor 1983). The reporter noted that the “Boston Globe had a computer expert analyze WarGames and he picked it to pieces. The kid couldn’t do it in the real world. The movie has the kid 18 Television & New Media playing a simulator and not NORAD’s main system” (Chancellor 1983). By treating the fictional plot as possible outside the world of the movies, news media indicated the film’s mobilization of a discourse in which the internet was a threat to national security, 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 protection of the public. Institutions of military power were forced by news media outlets to answer to fantasy allegations lobbied by a fictional film. For example, ABC recalled past NORAD errors to dispute claims that the system was flawless and quoted Defense 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 efforts to upgrade emergency communication links between the United States and the USSR, reporting that Reagan had recently announced that he would upgrade the hot- line to allow the transmission of photos and to facilitate emergency contact between the 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 gave extended coverage to a story that challenged assuring notions propagated by U.S. military officials that the WarGames scenario could never happen. On CBS, Dan Rather opened his report saying: “WarGames . . . that popular movie’s future-shock premise came pretty close today to becoming shocking science fact,” going on to detail 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, the broadcast interviewed the hackers, who said “It’s easy to do. There’s no security or nothing” (Rather 1983). Life magazine described the incident: A troubling side of the computer revolution came to light when FBI agents questioned a number of “hackers,” including 17-year-old Neal Patrick of Milwaukee. Like his youthful hero in the summer hit WarGames, Patrick was able to break into what were thought to be secure computer systems. (Life 1984, 50) Like Life, both NBC and ABC’s stories emphasized that the hackers had watched WarGames and were “inspired” by it and that “millions of kids who yearn for their own computer sat enthralled” by the film. (Jennings 1983; Brokaw 1983; Chancellor 1983). These millions of would-be hackers raised the specter of national insecurity, tapping cold war anxieties about the “enemy within.” These anxieties would only increase as computers became more ubiquitous and available to these increasing numbers of young rebellious hackers. NBC reported that “as more people buy home computers, the chances of using home computers to change or steal information from other computers increases” (Mudd 1983).  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 19 News media ramped up anxiety about hackers by casting the film as having causative power to inspire devious behavior. One NBC report played a clip of WarGames, framing the film as “a story of a boy and his computer” that “fueled an idea within a group of computer whizzes in Milwaukee” a group that Defense Attorney Paul Piatrowski, representing the hackers, described as “hobbyists, like stamp collectors” (Mudd 1983). CBS’s follow-up report identified the hacker group as the “414,” after their area code. The report said that the FBI granted immunity to one of the hackers, Neal Patrick, in exchange for information about how the hack worked. Journalist Ned Potter reported the hackers were challenged by gaining entry to computers and had not intended to misuse their access by engaging in theft. The hackers wanted to play games like in the movie WarGames. Potter went on to explain in detail how modem networks function, using WarGames footage as illus- tration (Kurtis 1983). The internet in these newscasts was simultaneously a security risk of great proportions and a harmless realm of teenaged prankdom. In their follow-up, CBS news interviewed Alabaman Leonora Grumbles about her son Robert, who broke into NASA’s computer systems with his three friends and printed messages like “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, “These boys are not the Mafia, you know” (Jennings 1984). On NBC’s report of the same incident, Robert Grumbles said “it was like the movie WarGames.” NBC described the “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 computer security system is working” (Brokaw 1984). The internet was seen as separate from real life and so what occurred in cyberspace was less important than transgressions viewed as involving the teen physical body. Connections between the film and the “414” Milwaukee hacking events made the film 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 to publish 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 kind of questions those media outlets would likely ask institutional sources. The 1984 leg- islation offered policy makers an answer to these media inquiries, allowed policy makers to represent policy and the government as offering responses to pressing issues, and to represent themselves as serving timely and important needs of their constituents. Media attention may provide the impetus for state attention, but the institution 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 20 Television & New Media of the film was shown at the beginning of the first hearing and speakers referred to the film throughout the hearings. Although these institutional sources downplayed the film’s military scenario, they simultaneously labeled the film more often as an “accurate representation” than a “fictional story.” In his opening statement, Representative Dan Glickman, 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 went on to say, First, there was the popular film WarGames, in which a youngster is able to penetrate the computers of the North American Defense Command and almost precipitates World War III. While this ultimate disaster is not likely possible, the film does illustrate, I am told, certain break-in methods that are factual. (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 1) Glickman recognized the film, then, as both a realistic and unrealistic representation of potential future events. He reinforced the security of defense systems, but also admitted that hacking occurs in ways similar to those represented in the film. As if following 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 from government officials, it also came from industry representatives. Stephen Walker, president of Trusted Information Systems, Inc.,17 said that he thought “The highly popular movie WarGames should be required viewing for all who were concerned with 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 the measure 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 are all 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 ever growing needs for rapid communication (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 94–95). In this statement, Walker raised the specter of bigger threats to national security than juvenile hacking and suggested that vulnerabilities will increase in the future unless action was taken. Some policy makers, like Representative Timothy E. Wirth, were overt in their hopes that the anxiety generated or tapped by the both film and the “414” Milwaukee hacking events would cause such action. In a statement read at the hearing directly after the WarGames clip was shown, Wirth wrote:  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 21 Perhaps the combination of the recent ‘hackers,’ which were exposed in Milwaukee, coupled with the popular movie WarGames, will move the discussion into the public eye and help to force debate on the implications of the changes that are occurring across the 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 policy making 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 be in traditional veins, or may branch into new ones. Thus, policy windows are one moment in which new ideas may enter the policy arena or when new sources may gain credibility and discredit old sources. The policy window that opened via WarGames and its attendant press coverage did represent a transfer in credibility, namely to hackers like Neal Patrick, a 414 Milwaukee hacker who testified at the hearings. 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 (a 414 hacker) and Lightman (character from WarGames) were equivalent. Not only did Patrick’s testimony directly follow the film clip, but Patrick was also represented in the hearings in ways similar to Lightman in WarGames. Both were imagined as simultaneously teen video-gamers, as members of the computer-able generation powerful over cyberspace, and as members of hacker subculture. Policy makers questioned Patrick directly about the film WarGames. Congressman Bill Nelson asked: “Was anything gleaned from the movie [WarGames]? Did that instigate you and/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 months before WarGames came out, which was late May.18 And the only connection that there was between the movie and what we did was that Joshua was used as a few accounts on 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 him and his fellow teen cohorts and that to them breaking into computer systems was similar to beating a video game. Although he legitimated the film by suggesting his activities were similar to those in the film, he also represented the film as material for 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 of antiestablishment hacker subculture entered the debates. Representative Glickman, who detailed the “414” hacking incidents perpetrated by Neal Patrick and his friends, connected him to hacker subculture. He said described the “underground” 22 Television & New Media hacker culture as made up of “computer hackers who continuously try to defeat the security programmed into modern computers” (Glickman 1983, 2). The exaggerated relentlessness of hacker activities and the implied monolithic nature of hackers demonized the subculture and simplified its ideological belief system. This kind of representation reinforced Glickman’s ultimate goal to implement controlling policy. In contrast to Glickman’s focus on dangerous hackers, in his introduction Congressman Thomas Piaskoski described Patrick as a relatively “normal” teenager, who happened to be a computer expert. Piaskoski said, “He is human. He is 17 years old . . . 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 him called 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’s accepted the invitation so that he can let the public know, and especially other young computer hobbyists, that there are pitfalls, there are dangers, that there is potential harm that 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 purposes and suggested had neither political agenda nor a desire for fame. He was not part of a dangerous subculture intent on subverting the system and was no antiestablishment communist. Instead, he was a teenager, who made a mistake, a recognized human endeavor, and who wanted to help correct the weaknesses on which he previously capitalized. Piaskoski represented Patrick as a reformed rebel, a former hacker and current computer expert now on the same side as the policy makers. He suggested the committee should listen to Patrick’s testimony with appropriate respect and treat him as an authority figure. Like Joshua, the teenaged computer gone berserk in WarGames, Patrick had grown up and was now a capable, self-regulating citizen subject. And like Joshua, for Congressman Glickman, computing technology itself was 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 must learn 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 there an ethical problem? And I suspect the answer is probably both. But the fact of the matter is that the hearing today will try to dramatize the problem and also deal with the ways to prevent it from becoming a national catastrophe. (Glickman 1983, 2) In Glickman’s metaphor, the U.S. government may end up having “fathered” an uncontrollable, self-animating menace instead of the technological creature–citizen  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 23 it had hoped. The menace could cause destruction on a national scale. However, Glickman reinstated human agency in his representation, suggesting that although the state created the unruly technology, problems may be ultimately solvable through further engagement by the “father” or state. Visions of hackers as explicitly male youths 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 historical moment 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 programs designed to educate, or to teach appropriate computer use. Congressman Wyden said education about appropriate computer use should be incorporated into the public schools. 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 other types 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. And as we approach the problem evident in the computerization of society, we want to try to 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 and that, although misdirected, computer hacking represented one incarnation of that cre- ative energy. Nelson suggested that American creativity and inventiveness was a primary 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 and security. (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 and responsible drivers, so should a computer ethics curriculum equip our young people to use a computer responsibly. Certainly the tools of the computer age are as powerful as the automobile and should be treated seriously. (U.S. Congress. House. 1983, 29) In his statement, teenagers were at risk of learning inappropriate computer use unless the government stepped in to teach self-regulation (i.e., ethics) that would serve the national interest. The comparison of the computer to the automobile not only suggested the computer as both useful and dangerous, it also suggested the growing ubiquity of the computer. These proposals were lobbied not only because most policy makers felt no technological security measures would ultimately ever be 24 Television & New Media enough to protect security interests, but also because policy makers were most dis- turbed by the perceived ethical violations of hackers. Hackers were represented as not deliberately violating ethics, but as simply not possessing the “right” ethnical framework. 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” (Jennings 1983). Congressman Ron Wyden said, I think one of the things that concerns committee members the most is that this is an area that has attracted some of the best and brightest young people and that in so many instances 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 that the younger generation possessed significant character flaws or that they were cor- rupted by their internet use. This “changing of the guard” anxiety suggested that these policy makers saw youths as developing or operating under an alternative, or antiestablishment, moral structure. Attempts to enforce educational programs suggest that (re-)education could provide the nation with stability and protect the status-quo. Like Patrick, this generation of computer-abled unruly teens could be rehabilitated and formed into the next generation of “appropriately” self-regulating citizen-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 our citizens about the risk” (1983, 5). Congressman Don Fuqua, Chairman of the Committee 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 youngsters are a computer generation. They have the same kind of passion for computers that their parents had for cars when they were growing up. So, it doesn’t take much of a projection to forecast the day when we will be completely comfortable with computers as an integral part 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 computer ability, Fuqua also downplayed anxieties about youth rebellion by noting the cycle of hysteria over interest in and control of new technologies by younger generations. In sum, the debate around the first federal internet policy focused around the film WarGames, around issues of teenage hackers and national security. In this sense, news media reports and hearings leading up to the first internet legislation were framed by a fully formed “teen technology” discourse that imagined both the internet itself 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  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 25 of global destruction and uncontrollable technology—and antiestablishment youths—the changing of the guard that would be responsible for America’s future. Securing the internet and containing or redirecting rebellious spirit into productivity became 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 discursive construction. Policy makers used the film and its discursive engagement to not only push arguments for policies that taught youths “appropriate” computer use, but also to 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 and helped established the government as the official police, or “parent,” of the internet and its users. The state, then, cast its regulation as the epitome of democratic success in that it reincorporated rebels into society productively without oppressing them, a distinction necessary in 1984, when Orwell’s book and cold war ideological battles served as frames for many discussions (and critiques) of both technology and state power. These first media and policy debates about internet policy form not only the roots of today’s regulations, but also the roots of the ways the internet is currently imagined. 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 teenaged domains, but no longer as being the domain of teenagers. Although still present, the primary user has shifted from the mischievous teen to the productive adult worker and the computer as a user-friendly tool replaced the computer as a rebellious juve- nile technology. Both have, in essence, “grown up.” Notes 1. 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 the internet at home: (U.S. Census 2007); “Dataquest, a market research concern, estimates that 150,000 modems 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 1991 case 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 computer access. Although the act was first amended in 1986, then called the U.S. Computer Fraud and Abuse Act 26 Television & New Media of 1986, and amendments continued into the early 2000s, the original 1984 version continues to set the main 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 in the 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 First Amendment and the Computer Hacker Controversies of 1990,” a master’s thesis by Robert Berry from The 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 computer market, anxieties about Japan were not discursively dominant until the late 1980s and early 1990s. This work, therefore, focuses on more visible anxieties about the Soviet Union. 15. Military Expansion: Broad 1983; Burnham 1983; Cummings 1983. Security Threats: New York Times 1983; Gravely 1983. 16. Although Edwards notes that in WarGames the military–industrial, computer-unskilled are caught in a common cold war story in which machines take over defense weapons, he does not focus on the added element 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 Berg, Eric. 1983. AT&T and Coleco in video game venture. New York Times, September 8. Bourdieu, Pierre. 1977. Outline of a theory of practice. Translated by Richard Nice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Broad, William. 1983. Computer security worries military experts. New York Times, September 21. Brokaw, Tom. 1983. WarGames. NBC Nightly News, August 11. ———. 1984. NASA computer break-in. NBC Nightly News, July 17. Burnham, David. 1983. Computer security raises questions. New York Times, August 13. Chancellor, John. 1983. WarGames. NBC Nightly News, July 13. Cocks, Jay. 1983. The updated book of jobs. Time, January 3, 26. Cummings, Judith. 1983. Coast computer buff seized in intrusion into military–civilian data. New York Times, November 3.  Schulte / “The WarGames Scenario” 27 Edwards, Paul. 1997. The closed world: Computers and the politics of discourse in cold war America. Cambridge: MIT Press. Elmer-DeWitt, Philip. 1983. Mixing suntans with software. Time, August 22, 61. ———. 1984. Forty days and forty nights. Time, April 16, 60. Friedman, Ted. 2005. Electric dreams: Computers in American culture. New York: New York University Press. Friedrich, Otto. 1983a. Glork! A glossary for gweeps: Even users should grok this cuspy sampler of com- 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: A chronology, 1843 to the present. Oxford: ABC-CLIO. Mudd, Roger. 1983. WarGames. NBC Nightly News, August 18. New York Times. 1983. “War Games” film cited in computer bank intrusion. November 6. Nunes, Don. 1983. Computer lingo, those joysticks and software, in one easy lesson. Washington Post, February 21. Pollack, Andrew. 1983. Technology moving data from A to B. New York Times, September 22. Potts, Mark. 1983. Atari add-on turns games to computers. Washington Post, February 10. Rather, Dan. 1983. WarGames scenario. CBS Evening News, August 11. Rosenblatt, Roger. 1982. The mind in the machine. Time, May 3, 58. Sandberg-Diment, Erik. 1983. Personal computers: Hello, outside world. New York Times, February 15. Schrage, Mark. 1983. Atari to tap ‘smart phone’ market. Washington Post, March 17. Spigel, Lynn. 1992. Make room for TV: Television and the family ideal in postwar America. Chicago: University Of Chicago Press. Taylor, Alexander. 1982. The seeds of success. Time, February 15, 11. U.S. Census. http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/computer.html (accessed May 24, 2007). U.S. Congress. House. 1983. Committee on science and technology. Computer and communications secu- rity and privacy. 98th Congress, 2nd session, September 26, October 17, 24. U.S. House. 1983. Committee on science and technology. Computer and communication security and pri- vacy report/ 98th Congress, 2nd session, H702–9. Stephanie Ricker Schulte is a doctoral candidate in American Studies at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Her email: ricker@gwu.edu.