Galactic Hacker Party

The Galactic Hacker Party was a hacker con that was held in Paradiso in the Netherlands in 1989. Visitors were people with an interest in technology (mainly computers) and the - at that time - relatively unknown internet.

Hacker party and conference

Along with the party, a conference was held: the ICATA (Intercontinental conference on alternative use of technology Amsterdam), but both organisers and visitors saw the combination actually as one event. This combination proved to be successful and the concept has been repeated every four years since, up to Observe. Hack. Make. in 2013.

Organisation and attendance

Driving force behind the event were people associated with the hacker magazine Hack-Tic, its editor in chief Rop Gonggrijp, Patrice Riemens, and Caroline Nevejan on behalf of Paradiso. It was supported by a department of the University of Amsterdam, which supplied a permanent connection to the internet, a novelty at the time.

The Galactic Hacker Party and conference were attended by Hack-Tic readers and contributors, people from the German Chaos Computer Club, the New York based 2600: The Hacker Quarterly, along with participants from various other countries. Attendees exchanged knowledge and experience on computer systems, dial-up connections, computer viruses and hacking, which wasn't yet illegal. At the conference lectures were held on feminism and computers, models for artificial intelligence and on computer-human interaction. The joint declaration of the conference started with "The free and infuttered flow of information is an essential part of our fundamental liberties and shall be upheld in all circumstances."^[1]

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