Table of Contents
Introduction
After defeating the Zork challenge, Wade receives the Cap’n Crunch whistle in a cereal box instead of a key. He blows the whistle and it turns into the Jade Key. This felt both apt and strange. Much of the nostalgia in the book resonated with me. Having not been a deep tech guy at the time, I knew nothing about the mythical Cap’n Crunch whistle. So, I did what I always do in such a situation. I started doing some searching.
What I found is truly one of the most interesting and bizarre stories in all of tech history. A whistle came in a box of cereal that people noticed could be used to hack the phone company and receive free long distance calls. For those too young to remember, when you called outside of your area code, the phone company charged extra. This whistle let them bypass the charge.
History
Up above, I generalized the discovery by saying “people”. That sells one man short in the story, so I want to give him his credit due. John Draper, who took the name “Captain Crunch”, figured out that the whistle tone matched the frequency that AT&T used to identify a long distance line. True to the egalitarian roots of hacking, he shared his knowledge with others. True to the capitalist nature of America, blue boxes were developed that automatically emitted the frequency. They sold for around 150-200 dollars originally.
This is an absolutely wild concept for me. My wife and I met online and we communicated often via phone. In one month, my phone bill was over 500 dollars. Long distance charges were no joke. The fact that some guy figured out that a whistle, given out in cereal boxes, could circumvent tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees from AT&T warms my little anti-capitalist heart.
But, wait, there’s more. Before John Draper, several other heroes discovered the 2600 Hertz frequency trick and mimicked by training themselves to whistle at the frequency. One of them, Joe Engressia (code name: Joybubbles), accidentally figured it out as a 7 year old kid. This sent him on a mission to learn more and join forces with others to start the “phone phreaking” community.
The Connection
This episode goes to show that hacking has existed as long as there have been people who wanted to stick it to the big corporations. It greatly saddens me that those very same corporations absorbed them. But, I guess that’s how it goes. Counter culture either gets eradicated or it goes on to become culture. From there, it becomes the dominant culture, which in this country is hyper individualism and capitalism right now. Sure, we have forces on our side who are willing to help with torrents and other tips and tricks.
I hope that this latest push towards fascism brings us closer to a world where we get true hacktivists willing to work to break through the noise and bring us closer to a true utopian society. Because, right now, our tech overlords are taking the worst lessons from science fiction and building the Torment Nexus. In spite of all the warnings, we are headed for Terminator instead of Star Trek.
Conclusion
When I was a high school student, I hated history. Most of my teachers presented it as a list of dates to remember. When I traveled to Greece with my wife, she showed me just how interesting history can be. This throw away scene in the book led me down a rabbit hole and I’m still learning things from the history of the Cap’n Crunch whistle.
