Hacking power
In his new book The Death of the Gods: The New Global Power Grab, the British author and researcher Carl Miller describes the mindset of a hacker taking control of a digital device. First comes exhaustive attentiveness: learning how something works, its limitations, its imperfections. Then comes the quest for a method that can turn these imperfections into vulnerability. Finally, the vulnerability is exploited. It’s a model of the scientific method in action – and of power grasped via empirical research. “Through a mixture of knowledge, skill, perseverance,” writes Miller, “you’ve owned the device!”
This idea of ‘owning’ something or someone, in the sense of
