Phil Lapsley is on tour starting today to promote his new book, “Exploding the Phone,” which features a foreword by Steve Wozniak.
The book “traces the birth of long-distance communication and the telephone, the rise of AT&T’s monopoly, the creation of the sophisticated machines that made it all work, and the discovery of Ma Bell’s Achilles’ heel,” the publisher blurbs, and it “weaves together the clandestine underground of phone phreaks who turned the network into their electronic playground, the mobsters who exploited its flaws to avoid the feds, and the counterculture movement that argued you should rip off the phone company to fight against the war in Vietnam.”
It’s a fascinating book steeped in the rich history of phreakers and hackers, and the discussions and readings around the USA should be great fun.