Weekend Reading

The weekend can be a great time to catch up on all the reading you’ve fallen behind on during the week. I’m sure you’ve already got a stack of things to wade through already, but if you’ve got a bit of reading time to spare I’d like to recommend a timeless piece of long form journalism that I read some time ago that has really stuck with me. It’s a forty year old piece from Esquire Magazine by Ron Rosenbaum — Secrets of the Little Blue Box. It’s an engrossing look into the world of phone phreaking, that analog precursor of computer hacking. The cast of characters in the piece are rich and varied, including the expected shadowy figures pedalling illegal blue boxes and seemingly unlikely blind savants with the gift of perfect pitch. The 2600 hz tone was the key to free long distance calls in an era when communication costs were incredibly high by today’s standards. If you have an interest in technology and enjoy a good tale well told, you’re going like this one a lot.