John Flowers: Because hacking has a million little James Freys
Pitch Magazine says it's found the tech world's James Frey in hacker and search engineer John Flowers. In an eight-page piece, Pitch writer David Martin crows over inconsistencies in Flowers' history (as given by Flowers in speeches, interviews, and his blog). But, so what? Maybe there are still some standards in memoir publishing, but this is a hacker. Deception and braggadocio are prerequisites.
There's no point calling Flowers out on little things like whether he graduated from Berkeley (if you didn't go to Stanford, who cares about college?) or whether he did time in an FBI juvie hall (sure, the FBI says they don't run juvie detention centers, but who are you gonna believe?). So, great. Another pathological liar for a hacker. But just for kicks, here are the good bits:
Search technology has always frustrated Flowers. He says he can remember being 9 years old and asking his Tandy TRS-80, "Why is the sky blue?" The computer simply beeped at him.
He says his confinement coincided with the popularity of the 1983 geek classic WarGames. Adult counselors, he says, worried about his ability to start Armageddon with the push of a few buttons.
Palahniuk, the author of Fight Club, is one of Flowers' heroes, along with Steve Jobs and the late physicist Richard P. Feynman.
Oh. My. God. Can we all agree that the "Jobs is my hero" schtick got old in the 80s?
