APPROACHING ZERO: Data Crime and the Computer Underworld By Bryan Clough and Paul Mungo (Faber, $70) ONE of the earliest signs that the electronic age faced serious danger from unexpected quarters came after a chance discovery by an eight-year-old blind boy called Joe.
Joe Engressia loved the telephone, because it was a way for a sightless child to reach out. One day, Joe noticed that when he whistled while listening to a taped message, the tape would stop.
The technical reason - something Joe would find out later - was that he had accidentally whistled a 2,600-cycle tone. This, in the language of telephone computers, said that the call was terminated. The computer stopped charging for the call, but the connection remained in place. The rest of the call became free.
Joe and other blind youngsters soon learned to manipulate the international telephone system by reproducing the sounds that controlled the telephone company's electronic hardware. They used whistles. They used the gaps between their teeth. They held Hammond organs next to the handset. They gave themselves calls to any part of the direct-dial world, all free of charge.
This happened in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and the young people using this system were called phreakers. But as the world of computing developed in the following decade, phreaking evolved into hacking, and eventually the growth of the ''cyberpunk''generation, addicted to the world of electronic impulses.
It really was the revenge of the nerds. Bright young kids (almost always male) could sit in their bedrooms playing with home computers. Playing video games? Sort of. Actually junior was transferring money from global banks into his savings account. Or manipulating factory computers to send him free samples.