Staff Bio: Gen ksponge

When asked to write my ‘CyberArmy Biography’ I wasn’t exactly sure what to say. I tried to outline my activities while here and my perspective on things; it is of course completely subjective and only represents my opinion. I do not have the best of memories, so please forgive me if some of my dates are fuzzy :)

In late 2002 I stumbled across the Armory while searching for hacking tutorials. To provide a little bit of background info on myself I grew up in a technophobic house, and while living with my family I was never allowed to own a computer. Only encouraged by the forbidden nature of the internet and fascinated by the seemingly unlimited amount of information available, it wasn’t long before I was addicted. I would spend every Saturday in my local library, saving whatever I could grab in my 30 minute time limit to a floppy disk before jumping back in line, waiting for a couple hours for my turn to come again.

Fourteen years old at the time I was not able to comprehend much of what I learned, but having figured out how to make a general nuisance of myself with Net Bus and Sub7 in junior high I knew I wanted to learn more. Always having been fascinated by technology with nobody to teach me how it worked or how to use it I had somehow gained a reputation for being a hacker from my family and teachers. During one of my download sprees fate destined me to stumble across a copy of the Hacker’s Manifesto and immediately realized I had somehow assimilated several misconceptions about myself and hacking. The most important being I was not a hacker, the second was grasping the difference between a script kiddy (me) and what I really wanted this was to walk the path of the elite. By that time I was carrying around an expanding file folder with my favorite documents in it and The Mentor became my hero.

While I can’t claim the same level of seniority as some of the other members, when I first joined CyberArmy was a different place. There were dozens of forums and riding with the traffic from the Zebulon era they were well populated. Waz had recently completed the first incarnation of Dinah and with it came a controversial ranksplit. Overlord, now known as Pengo had been ousted by the first staff coup, and while authority reverted to a more ‘democratic’ staff group, CyberArmy’s maintained a strong sense of idealism. An expression of this idealism, CyberArmy’s Mission Statement helped structure every facet of the community:

”CyberArmy stands for freedom of thought, freedom of expression, and freedom of information on the Internet. We support the free creation, development and proliferation of ideas and knowledge through such forums as the open-source community. We recognize that in order for these ideas to flow freely, people must also possess the right to their own privacy. We further recognize that to preserve these freedoms and rights, they must be exercised responsibly. We seek to educate people about privacy and things which threaten it, and we seek to promote the responsible use of the Internet as a medium for the sharing of thoughts, ideas, and information. We believe that the people best-qualified to regulate the Internet are its users, and we seek to empower them to remove or mitigate influences which they believe to be subversive to these freedoms and rights.”

To avoid being accused of propagating revisionist history there was a fair bit of drama within CyberArmy’s upper echelons. People were upset that they had lost their rank, the famous Zebulon challenges were discontinued and MrYowler was excommunicated from the formal authority structure. A bidding war over the domain commenced which resulted in MrYowler controlling CyberArmy.com and much of the membership moving to CyberArmy.net. I did not play any part of this and my ignorance enabled me to continue what some may consider a naive perspective.

My first brigade position was a X/O of a sub brigade within CAU called Knowledge Bank Collection. Our job was to contact external sites and seek permission to use their content. I think it was being delegated this responsibility which really gave me a sense of belonging and motivated me to increase my activity levels. Even though I didn’t have a computer, and at the cost of my high school grades I quickly expanded and gained honorary membership in several groups. I felt unfulfilled in CAU, handed command to a good friend and my X/O theunholy and moved to the Services and Support brigade. I like to think my hard work was recognized by the fact that I had privileges which were abnormal for my rank. I was the lowest ranking member of the Promotion Council, I was accepted on the Moderation team, became C/O of CyberArmy Public Relations and with staff oversight led both the Manifesto and Carnivore projects. By this time in 2005 I had earned the rank of Captain.

Due to home drama which led to my first hitch hiking expedition and my inability to maintain a consistent activity level while traveling I was forced to resign from my positions but I continued what had become my tradition of idling on IRC in libraries I visited. I returned in December of 2005 and began participating in CAU, becoming the lowest ranking X/O of a top level brigade other than Tulkas, still at the Captain rank. Goldfish, with the help of Sefo and others completed the new Sered challenges in 2006, something which had come to look like vaporware since the removal of the Zebulon challenges. In January of 2007 Enstyne awarded me with a field promotion to the rank of Kernel. The next month he demoted me to Lt Kernel for talking trash ;p

That summer I took an extended LOA to work on a farm in California, afterwards spending some time in an ashram in Colorado. To refrain from continuing the monotony of writing of this meaningless, and to save the reader the what must be horrible pain of reading it I will paraphrase
by saying during this period CPC split from CyberArmy leading to several experimental brigade reorganizations. In 2008, while taking a year for international travel, joined Staff and served as C/O for a few different brigades including SAS and CSAP. Most recently, I resigned from being the X/O of CAU.

CyberArmy has changed a lot in the last seven years, but one thing has remained constant. We have always had poor follow through. It is my personal opinion that we need to focus less on brigades themselves and ask ourselves how we encourage curiosity and creativity. I outlined a rough idea for this over a year ago. Circumstances have changed a bit since then. Our Staff team is different, we have a different CinC and we are making headway towards a more Open CyberArmy with the Accomplishment System and Wind Stone. CyberArmy is a wonderful learning environment, I myself having been lucky to of had the opportunity to learn from many talented individuals. Dinah, Volund, Darknet and Sered all began as personal projects and hold enormous learning potential for those interested in related technology. We need to put away elitism and nurture an inquisitive atmosphere, encouraging collaborative works and facilitate learning networks.

Anyways….thanks guys :)

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