Scoundrels or Saviors? 8 Notorious Nerds On Trial

Posted 09/13/2011 at 1:01pm | by Gord Goble

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We decide: Scurvy dogs or merely edgy?

Every hero is a villain, every villain a hero. Truth is that even the greatest people in history had at least a hint of the dark side within them.

Today we look at an assortment of men inside—or merely tied to—the tech industry. Some are merely controversial, others are clearly of the bad seed variety. But do they deserve their status? How evil are they?

We come to conclusions, from Assange to Zuckerberg. Come along for the ride.

Julian Assange

Hero to many and villain to many more (he's been labeled a high-tech terrorist by the likes of Newt Gingrich and Mitch McConnell), Julian Assange is nothing if not incredibly controversial. Purportedly hacking computers by his mid-teens with a group calling itself "International Subversives," Assange had little interest in implanting viruses, annihilating data, or stealing cash. He instead felt the need to expose information - and even then only dicey corporate and government information he personally figured needed to be exposed. Whether that made him a truly bad guy depends very much on who's doing the judging.

But in WikiLeaks, Assange has a far more formidable weapon—the subterfuge of others. Since its official launch in 2006, the "not-for-profit media organization" has gathered and released hundreds of thousands of anonymously submitted media bits—usually documents, but oodles of video and audio segments, too—often to the obvious detriment of the organizations from which the media was obtained. Through WikiLeaks, the world has seen footage of apparent civilian massacres, critical corporate and government cover-ups, documents that approve assassinations, confidential climate change information, and much more.

Today, Assange is both reviled and worshiped. He's been temporarily jailed, threatened with treason, and—it would appear—chased by the Pentagon. And let us not forget that whole allegations of sexual misconduct thing—a situation some say is a purposeful frame job. Yet he's also been handed numerous awards and distinctions and was selected as Time Magazine's Reader's Choice 2010 Person of the Year (third place went to—cough—Lady Gaga).

Ultimately, it would seem Julian Assange is an imperfect man doing potentially perilous stuff that he believes is righteous work. Pompous? Yes. Questionable tactics? Yes. Villain? Er…maybe a wee bit.

Gerald Blanchard

We've all seen those movies where the impossibly adept, impossibly intelligent, and often impossibly handsome master-thief plans and executes, with split-second precision, the most daring of escapades. He's not out to physically harm anyone, and he's just so damned…exciting that we can't help but pull for him as he so cunningly sticks it to The Man. A villain? Of course. He is a thief, after all. But a somewhat loveable villain just the same.

Born in the cold Canadian prairie town of Winnipeg, Manitoba, Gerald Blanchard would become the real life manifestation of just that. He was a master of disguise, concealing his identity on countless occasions during the course of his travels. He was fearless—parachuting in total darkness into a Viennese castle to steal a priceless diamond-encrusted pearl, then later rappelling from the walls of that very castle. And he could slip from custody or even the oncoming threat of custody seemingly on a whim. Police cruisers, police stations, jails—to Blanchard, they were mere challenges.

But more importantly for the purposes of this article, Blanchard was a high-tech whiz. His mother has since claimed that even as a kid, he "could take anything apart." And before he'd reached his teens, he was not only disassembling devices but building them too.

In time, Blanchard's passion for gadgetry only grew, as did his taste for thievery. He would learn how security devices work, then he'd set out to defeat them. In one instance, he surreptitiously installed pinhole video cameras and listening devices in a recently constructed bank to learn the lay of the land in advance of his theft. When the day came, he looted the ATM room, stole the hard drives containing incriminating surveillance footage, replaced the bank's camera equipment with his own, and did it all so carefully that investigators initially found nothing amiss.

Described by Canadian police as one of the most sophisticated criminal masterminds they'd ever seen, Blanchard eventually served several years in a prison from which he could not escape, and is currently somewhere between a halfway house and his supposed new, legit career as a security consultant. To which we say, "Yeah, sure."

Though Blanchard's generally high-tech exploits have a certain roguish charm, the fact remains that he's stolen a lot of money from a lot of people. Moreover, he's been loosely linked with terrorism. And for that, he is a mid-level villain, at the very least.

Larry Ellison

Co-founded and Chief Executive of software giant Oracle Corporation, Larry Ellison is a ridiculously wealthy man. Indeed, he's currently ranked as one of the ten richest dudes on the planet, regularly pulling in an annual salary in the high eight-figure range.

And he knows it. In fact, some might say he flaunts it.

Ellison owns cars—a full blown stable that includes a McLaren F1. He owns aircraft—a whole bunch of aircraft, big and small. He owns boats, though he's recently sold the most famous—the 500-foot behemoth named Rising Sun—to fellow moneybags David Geffen. His principle home (one of many) is valued at a bazillion gazillion dollars, and features a concert-worthy sound system so incredibly powerful that it purportedly uses a drained swimming pool as its subwoofer.

Good god, man, have you no shame?

But seriously folks, when you're this rich and this, er…up front about it, you will get detractors. Yet Ellison is disparaged for more than his ability to attract gobs of money, spend gobs of money, and accumulate more high-end toys than perhaps any man before him. You see, he is, in a word, antagonistic.

Ellison openly and creatively disses his rivals. He's the king of hostile takeovers. He regularly outspends his competitors and emerges unapologetically triumphant because of it. He stomps on the competition and comes away smiling, and he's regarded by many as an indiscreet womanizer. In the end, Ellison, like Charlie Sheen, enjoys "winning."

But are we to vilify the guy for merely practicing the principles of capitalism to the nth degree? We think not. Certainly no saint, Ellison is merely marginally villainous.

Bill Gates

Bill Gates has made a lot of enemies in his lifetime. His company has been accused, sometimes quite angrily, of monopolistic, anti-competitive business practices and heavy-handed tactics. It has also been criticized for assimilating technology, or at least assimilating the companies that create that technology, rather than innovating from within. Worse still, it has been unabashedly knocked for buying up new ideas and then extinguishing them—in essence acting as the schoolyard bully.

And let us not forget that Microsoft's trump card, Windows, has long derided by end users, who grew weary in the 90s and the 00s of its security flaws and error-prone clunkiness, particularly when compared to the apparent smooth-sailing of Apple's competing operating system. Though Win 98, XP, and 7 have generally been pretty solid, most every other edition has justifiably received its fair share of criticism.

As for the man himself, Gates is no stranger to searing condemnation. One need only Google his name and an appropriate adjective to feel the contempt by which this man is held in some circles. He's a nerd, sure, but is that reason enough to get the hate on? Not really. We attribute a lot of it to plain old jealousy, though he does seem a bit arrogant at times, and certainly rumors of his questionable inner business dealings abound, particularly in Microsoft's formative years.

That the guy is the subject of more memorable downbeat quotes than any nerd past or present clearly doesn't help. Sun Microsystems Scott McNealy once said Gates is "probably the most dangerous and powerful industrialist of our age." Columnist Dave Barry quipped "there was never a chip that Bill Gates couldn't slow down with a new batch of features." Our favorite? Dennis Miller and his "Bill Gates is a monocle and a Persian cat away from being the villain in a James Bond movie."

And that's the question. Is he a mega-villain? We say no. Very few mega-billionaires assumed their place in life without stepping on a few toes along the way. But far more importantly, very few mega-billionaires give away so incredibly much of their fortune. This isn't some last-minute thing either - he's been at it since way back in 1994, and the guy hasn't let up since. Criticized even in his philanthropy for allotting money as he sees fit, Gates nevertheless has simply done too much good to be considered truly dastardly. A tincture of villainy notwithstanding, Gates is essentially a good guy with all-too human elements.