re: #83 First As Tragedy, Then As Farce

I was never a phone phreaker but it was a REVELATION to me when I discovered that you could dial numbers by pressing the hang-up button just right. Like, instead of dialing “5” on the rotary dial you could just press the hang-up switch 5 times in rhythmic succession and get the same result. It was totally useless but it definitely made me curious about how the phone system actually worked.

I didn’t have the words for it then, but I think the feeling was, ‘Oh my. The infrastructure is vulnerable.’