Manchester wore the personality of a working-class town, a place where
people often disliked the establishment and
distrusted authority figures. The 1970s and 1980s had not been kind to
most of Greater Manchester, with unemployment and urban decay
disfiguring the once-proud textile hub. But this decay only appeared
to strengthen an underlying resolve among many from the working
classes to challenge the symbols of power.
Pad didn't live in a public housing high-rise. He lived in a suburban
middle-class area, in an old, working-class town removed from the
dismal inner-city. But like many people from the north, he disliked
pretensions. Indeed, he harboured a healthy degree of good-natured
scepticism, perhaps stemming from a culture of mates whose favourite
pastime was pulling each other's leg down at the pub.
This scepticism was in full-gear as he watched the story of how
hackers supposedly moved satellites around in space, but somehow the
idea slipped through the checkpoints and captured his imagination,
just as it had done with Electron. He felt a desire to find out for
himself if it was true and he began pursuing hacking in enthusiastic
bursts.
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