There's something freeing about unfettered exploration of computer networks, or diving into the guts of a software program, people who are good at it tell me – something a little like flying.
Maybe that's why this year's Chaos Communication Camp is being held at an airport, complete with Red Baron rides in a decades-old, rumbling red biplane.
I ought to say up front that I'm not the best flyer. Airport bars and I have a long acquaintance. But this was too cool to pass up. Naturally, I buy my ticket with the other starry-eyed programmers and climb into the nine-seat compartment, nerves racing.
In truth, I think as I buckle my seatbelt, computer hacking may well be the natural successor of small-airplane flight. Orville and Wilbur Wright were nothing if not hackers. And what about Leonardo da Vinci, ur-tinkerer, whose not-quite-airworthy inventions of flying machines now grace museum walls?
The early age of winged exploration, pilots flying across countries, across oceans, around the world, all are counterparts to the desire to see what's in that next server, what a particular chip can be made to do even if it's not supposed to.
Certainly the campers that climb into the Baron behind me are excited enough. The propeller starts with a bang, a backfire, and a cloud of smoke that envelops the plane. Somebody whoops. We start, bouncing lightly along the runway until we slip almost sideways into the air – and then it's all excitement, green fields and campers' colored tents speeding below us, banking across the fringes of a rainstorm, wheeling above East German towns and factories and forests.
It's such an analog experience flying in a small plane, and particularly in something as anachronistic as a biplane. If 747s are the Dells and IBMs of the sky, the Baron is the Commodore 64, or maybe the Apple II. It bumps a little, but it runs like a (slightly anxiety-provoking) dream.
For a few minutes the pilot gives the stick to one of the other campers, who immediately swerves violently to the right. Hands, certainly mine, reach out to grab hold of something. Eyes widen, but there are grins – mostly – all around. We stabilize. A right turn, and then things are under control again.
By the time we land a half-hour or so later, I'm ready to sign up for small planes for the rest of my travels. Hell with the big tin cans, I say let the tinkerers fly.
