Hippies from Hell

Filmmaker and writer Ine Poppe plunges into the world of the Internet and computers with her son Zoro. She finds out that the word ‘hacking’ not only applies to technology freaks who get their kicks out of hacking computers. Hacking is a mentality, an attitude to life of people who are intensively involved with the possibilities of the world around them. This certainly applies to the Hippies from hell group, a Dutch club of computer fanatics, artists, writers and puzzlers. The group arose in the eighties, the toddler years of the Internet. One of them is the founder of xs4all, the first company that gave private persons access to the Net. But also lock pickers, boffins who make a game out of breaking locks, are part of Hippies from hell. In the initial phase, the group published Hacktic magazine, featuring assorted tips with which everybody could get going digitally. The fact that the contents of the magazine sometimes exceeded the legal limits or in any case annoyed the government and companies was one of the reasons of its downfall. But the hackers’ movement is still alive and kicking and has an international character, which is demonstrated by the images of the well-attended hackers’ festival HAL 2001.