Lord Digital

Patrick Karel Kroupa (born January 20, 1969), known colloquially as Lord Digital, is an American writer, hacker, and activist. Kroupa was a member of the Legion of Doom and Cult of the Dead Cow hacker groups and co-founded MindVox in 1991 with Bruce Fancher.

Early years

Kroupa was born in Los Angeles, California, on January 20, 1969. His Czech parents left Prague, Czechoslovakia, after the Soviet invasion in 1968 and divorced when Kroupa was six. He then moved to New York City, where he was raised by his mother. He is the nephew of Czech opera singer Zdeněk Kroupa.Zdeněk Kroupa
1921-1999

Kroupa was part of the first generation to grow up with home computers and network access. In numerous interviews he has repeatedly listed two events which were important in shaping the course of his later years.

The first was being exposed to one of the first two Cray supercomputers that were ever built, which was located at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) where his father was a physicist, who took him through the labs and taught him to program in Fortran and feed the Cray using punched cards. This happened during the same year that Woody Allen was filming '' Sleeper'', using NCAR in many of the futuristic background scenes that appeared in the movie. Kroupa got an Apple II computer for his personal use around the time he was seven or eight years old.Internet Gurus
Tod Foley

The second event that shaped his life was being part of the last days of Abbie Hoffman's Youth International Party, YIPL/TAP (Youth International Party Lines/Technological Assistance Program) counter-culture/Yippie meetings that were taking place in New York City's Lower East Side, during the early 1980s. Kroupa again lists this event, repeatedly in interviews, as opening many new doors for him and changing his perceptions about technology.

TAP was the original hacker and Phreaking, phone phreak publication which predated '' 2600'' by decades (at the time of the last TAP meetings, 2600 magazine was just starting to publish its first issues). Kroupa met many people there who would become part of his life in the years to come. Three of the main characters would be his future partner and lifelong friend, Bruce Fancher; Yippie/Medical Marijuana activist Dana Beal (The Theoretician), who was part of the John Draper (Cap'n Crunch) /Abbie Hoffman, technologically inclined branch of the counter-culture and perhaps most important: Herbert Huncke, who introduced Kroupa to heroin at age 14.Blacklisted News: A Secret History of the 80's
Yippie Book Collective. Bleecker Publishing (1984)

With the exception of the counter-cultural and hard-drug elements, the preceding history made Kroupa part of a small group, composed of a few hundred kids who were either wealthy enough to afford home computers in the late 1970s, or had technologically savvy families who understood the potentials of what the machines could do.The First Trinity: the Commodore PET, the Radio-Shack TRS-80, and the Apple
(1977-1980) The Internet as it is today did not exist; only a small percentage of the population had home computers and out of those who did, even fewer had online access through the use of modems.The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia
6th edition

During his time in the computer underground Kroupa was a member of the first Pirate/Cracking crew to ever exist for the Apple II computer: The Apple MafiaApple Mafia Krac
title page 1
/ref>Apple Mafia Krac
title page 2
/ref> and various phreaking/ hacking groups, including Knights of Shadow (KOS). When KOS fell apart after a series of arrests, many of the surviving members were absorbed into Kroupa's final group affiliation: the Legion of Doom (LoD/H).THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontie
War on The Legion
, Bruce Sterling

Kroupa started publishing some of his hacking techniques when he would have been around 12 or 13.
, Lord Digital (1982) There is a significant progression through years of text, which captures Kroupa's early evolution and skills,RSX11M Version 3.X Real Time Operating System
Terminus and Lord Digital (1984) culminating in an extensive, programmable phone phreaking and hacking toolk it for the Apple II computer, called Phantom Access (which is where the name Phantom Access Technologies, the parent corporation behind MindVox, would later come from).

The MindVox Years

Voices in my Head (1991–1996)

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the computer underground had suffered through a series of protracted raids by the Secret Service and FBI, called Operation Sundevil and Operation Redux. Many Legion of Doom members were raided and charged.THE HACKER CRACKDOWN: Law and Disorder on the Electronic Frontie
Sting Boards
, Bruce Sterling
1996
(December 10, 1990)
Phrack Magazine, Issue: 32, Article: 10International Intrusions: Motives and Patterns
Kent E. Anderson This happened against the backdrop of the first and largest gang war that ever took place in cyberspace, the Great Hacker War between LOD and their rival gang MOD (Masters of Deception).

Considering Kroupa and Fancher's backgrounds and the fact that MindVox employed a motley collection of convicted felons, including security expert Len RoseBoardwatch Magazine: MindVox
1992 and the infamous Phiber Optik (Mark Abene) who was awaiting a Manhattan grand jury indictment, these were very real issues at the time.

This is the environment in which Patrick Kroupa and Bruce Fancher launched MindVox. In the words of Bruce Fancher:

This is also the time during which Patrick Kroupa wrote, Voices in my Head, ''MindVox: The Overture''. Kroupa wrote about the cultural forces that were at play in the hacker underground during the decade that pre-dated the launch of MindVox, considered by some the "Golden Age" of cyberspace.

In the process of writing and releasing ''Voices'', Patrick Kroupa stepped out from behind Lord Digital. Instead of status in the hacker underground and notoriety in a sub-culture, Kroupa was being written about as the Jim Morrison of cyberspaceSurfing on the Internet
J. C. Herz () and receiving accolades from the mainstream press.
Wired Magazine, 1993, Charles Platt
Frank Bajak, Associated Press, 1993
New York Magazine, 1994
Andrew Hawkins, Mondo 2000, 1993

''Voices'' helped define what MindVox became, a counter-cultural media darling meriting full-length features in magazines and newspapers such as Rolling Stone, Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and The New Yorker. ''Voices in my Head'' was the spark that propelled Kroupa out of obscurity and into the mainstream.

There is no single article that captures this as well as '' Sassy'' magazine's effusive coverage of MindVox. The long, strange trip that began in the hardcore hacker underground, had landed in the middle of a glossy mainstream magazine targeted at an audience of teenage girls, with Kroupa and Fancher displacing that issue's "Cute boy band alert!" with the "Cute cyberpunk alert!".Hi Girlz! See you in Cyberspace
Sassy Magazine, 1994.

MIA / DOA (1996–2000)

A running theme through nearly all of Kroupa's writing is his drug use. He was a very vocal proponent of self-selecting one's own state of consciousness and freely wrote and talked about his own drug history. The caveat being, ''some'' of his drug use was open and public. The fact that he was an advocate of LSD and other psychedelic drugs was no big secret. The darker side of his life — that he regularly lost weeks of time injecting speedballs, was in and out of detoxes and rehabs, and suffered from bipolar disorder — were not publicized or mentioned until nearly a decade later.

Kroupa wrote with great honesty and passion about a variety of topics, but he very carefully danced around his own increasing dependence on heroin. Everybody knew that Kroupa occasionally used heroin, cocaine and dozens of other drugs, but not the extent.

By 1996, MindVox was at the absolute height of its powers, yet it was disintegrating. Bruce Fancher was suddenly part of two or three other start-ups, and system repairs that should have taken hours dragged on for weeks. While the user-base kept growing, the previously high level of intelligent discourse within the internal conferences had suffered, and while MindVox was getting more press than ever, all of it read like the same story being retold for the umpteenth time.

Sometime in early-to-mid 1996, Kroupa simply vanished. Freedom of choice gave way to the downward spiral of hardcore heroin addiction and dysfunction. In his 2005 book, ''Hip: The History'', ''New York Times'' reporter and former '' Details'' editor John Leland would write:

Kroupa's exact whereabouts and activities from early 1996 until December 1999 remain unknown. He has acknowledged that he travelled throughout North America and spent time living in Mexico, Belize, Puerto Rico, the Czech Republic and eventually Bangkok, Thailand.

The dot.com success story that began with MindVox eventually hit rock bottom when Patrick Kroupa turned thirty incarcerated, "doin' Cold turkey on cement, in The Tombs".Sound Bites of Patrick Kroupa, at the Drug Policy Alliance conference
DPA, New Orleans, 30 December 2007 Several months after this arrest, Kroupa finally kicked heroin through the use of the hallucinogenic drug, ibogaine. He was detoxed for the last time in the West Indies, on the Caribbean island of St. Kitts by Dr. Deborah Mash in late 1999.

He subsequently spent four months living at the Buddhist temple, Wat Tham Krabok, well known for its heroin and opium drug rehabilitation program.

21st century

A heroin-free Kroupa returned to the United States from Thailand in 2000, and became CTO of Dr. Deborah Mash's Ibogaine Research Project at the University of Miami's Miller School of Medicine.

Over the next several years, Kroupa appeared in a series of ibogaine-related news reports which aired on television, radio and print media. The most famous example probably being San Francisco's KRON news-report, which aired in 2004 and features Kroupa and Mash in a ten-minute long pro-ibogaine story.Hallucinogen May Cure Drug Addiction
KRON, 2004

Kroupa is regularly a featured speaker at psychedelics and harm reduction conferences.Psychedelic Television, 2006 Ibogaine Conference
/ref> He seems to have a penchant for appearing at speaking engagements with multiple cups of coffee lined up in front of him, sometimes chain-smoking cigarettes through hour-long presentations.Daniel Pinchbeck, Sandra Karpetas, Patrick Kroupa with coffee-cups, Ibogaine conference, 2003
Sandra Karpetas, Patrick Kroupa with coffee-cups, Ibogaine conference, 2003

Yippies and the counterculture

While Kroupa's past history with the Yippies began at around age 13 or 14, when the Yippies formalized a Yippie Speakers Bureau in 2003, consisting of: Paul Krassner, Dana Beal, Robert Altman, Grace Slick, Stew Albert, Dennis Peron, Ed Rosenthal, Jack Hoffman, Steve Conliff and Hunter S. Thompson, and went on tour during 2003-2004, the line-up featured the surprising inclusion of former Black Panther Party leader Dhoruba bin Wahad, and Patrick Kroupa, who wasn't born when the Yippies first became a cultural force in the United States, and was 2–3 generations younger than his closest compatriot.Yippie Speaker's Bureau
It is unknown whether the YSB remains active; it went on hiatus after the deaths of Stew Albert, Hunter S. Thompson (both in 2005), and Steve Conliff (2006).

On November 15, 2007, he spoke at the University Philosophical Society (Trinity College, Dublin), discussing ibogaine, the worldwide War on Drugs, and advocating the legalisation of all narcotics.The Irish Examiner, Legalisation of narcotics up for debate
November 15, 2007 The following Monday (November 19, 2007) Kroupa appeared on Ireland's national television station TV3's Ireland AM talk show, calling the War on Drugs:

Kroupa is High Priest in the Eastern European based Sacrament of Transition (a religious organization whose initiation rituals involve the sacramental use of ibogaine), and a member of Cult of the Dead Cow.Cult of the Dead Cow, Introducing two new members!
Feb 19, 2006

Bibliography

Essays

* Voices In My Head ''MindVox: The Overture'' (1992), Patrick K. Kroupa

Magazines

* The Akashic Records of Cyberspace (1993), Patrick K. Kroupa. Mondo 2000.
* Memoirs of a Cybernaut (1993), Patrick K. Kroupa. Wired.
* Agr1pPa - A Book of The Mentally Disturbed (1993), Patrick K. Kroupa. Mondo 2000

, Volume XIII, Number 2).
* Ibogaine in the 21st Century: Boosters, Tune-ups and Maintenance (2005), Patrick K. Kroupa & Hattie Wells. MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, Volume XV, Number 1).

References

Books

* Rudy Rucker & R. U. Sirius, (1992) ''User's Guide to the New Edge''. ()
* Bruce Sterling, (1993) '' The Hacker Crackdown: Law And Disorder On The Electronic Frontier''. ()
* Philip Bacweksi, Tod Foley, and Billy Barron (1994) ''Tricks of the Internet Gurus''. ()
* Frank Biocca, Mark R. Levy, (1994) ''Communication in the Age of Virtual Reality''. ()
* J C Herz, (1995) ''Surfing on the Internet''. ()
* St. Jude (Jude Milhon), (1995) ''The Real Cyberpunk Fakebook''. ()
* Jeff Goodell, (1996) ''The Cyberthief and the Samurai''. ()
* Charles Platt, (1997) ''Anarchy Online''. ()
* Melanie McGrath, (1998) ''Hard, Soft & Wet'' ()
* Richard Power, (2000) ''Tangled Web: Tales of Digital Crime from the Shadows of Cyberspace''. ()
* Rebecca Gurley Bace, (2000) ''Intrusion Detection''. ()
* John Biggs, (2004) ''Black Hat''. ()
* Joseph M. Kizza, (2005) ''Computer Network Security''. ()
* John Leland, (2005) ''Hip: The History''. ()

Magazines and newspapers

* Forbes, William Flanagan (1992)
The Playground Bullies Have Learned to Type
* Mondo 2000, Andrew Hawkins (1992)
There's A Party in my Mind... MindVox!
* Associated Press, Frank Bajak (1993)
Wiring the Planet: MindVox!
* The New Yorker (1993)
CyberHero
* Wired Magazine, Charles Platt (November 1993)
MindVox: Urban Attitude Online
* Sassy Magazine, Margie Ingall (1993)
Hi Girlz, See You in Cyberspace!
* New York Magazine, Jeff Goodell (1994)
Boot Up and See Me Sometime
* NY Times, John Leland (May 1, 2003)
Yippies' Answer to Smoke-Filled Rooms
* Ocean Drive, Tristram Korten (2006)

* Radar, Tristram Korten (October/November 2008), The Electric Acid Kool-aid Cure

Medical journals

* Brian Vastag, Addiction Treatment Strives for Legitimacy JAMA
Journal of the American Medical Association
Vol. 288 No. 24, December 25, 2002)

Public Access U.S. government documents

* United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Governmental Affairs. Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, (1996). Security in Cyberspace: Hearings before the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations of the Committee on Governmental Affairs, United States Senate, One Hundred Fourth Congress, Second Session, May 22, June 5, 25, and July 16, 1996

:Available from U.S. G.P.O., Supt. of Docs., Congressional Sales Office. ()

Film

* Benjamin De Loenen (2005)
Ibogaine: Rite of Passage
'. LunArt Production
iMDB

Television

KRON
(2004)
Hallucinogen May Cure Drug Addiction

Radio

KNX 1070 News Radio
(2005)

Music

* Billy Idol (1993) ''Cyberpunk'', EMI

References

External links

Personal homepage

Phantom Access Exhibit
*
Wonderful Things
" – War On Drugs essay

Textfiles List of Losers, 1984
*

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kroupa, Patrick K.
1969 births
Living people
American male writers
Psychedelic drug researchers
American psychedelic drug advocates
Phreaking
Hackers
Legion of Doom (hacker group)
Cult of the Dead Cow members
MindVox
Writers from Los Angeles
Writers from New York City
American people of Czech descent
People with bipolar disorder
Yippies
Wikipedia articles with ASCII art
Ibogaine activists
Activists from California