July 19, 2007 In 1982, Time Magazine made a bold move. Instead of bestowing its “Person of the Year” title to an actual person, it gave it to a thing: the Computer. Not since the Nixon/Kissinger year of 1972 had Time chosen to characterize a year with a choice so remarkably un-human. As the editorial explained, in all the turbulence of the year, the computer was the most crucial figure to emerge - “the greatest influence for good or evil.” But while Time proudly acknowledged that the “information revolution” was upon us, it was another man who truly ushered it in. In the same year, Rich Skrenta authored a program called Elk Cloner – it was the world’s first computer virus and it has shaped the development of the internet, software and social interaction ever since.

In late 2005, virus researcher Mikko Hyppönen reported 140 000 known computer viruses for the PC. When including the constantly released variants of existing viruses, the number of documented viruses can be seen to triple in size in as little as six months. The ILOVEYOU worm, a spectacularly effective virus, cost more than US$5.5 billion in damages after soaring from computer to computer around the world. The industry built around protecting computer users from viruses shows almost equally impressive figures. Symantec Norton Anti-Virus has had over 100 million subscribers, and based on its solid performance in 2006, McAfee expects a 2007 net revenue of up to US$1.275 billion. While throwing around huge numbers is a serious looking, but ultimately shallow way of discussing an issue, in this case it has an extra level of irony; the 25 years of mayhem and money caused by the computer virus is the legacy of one mildly annoying practical joke.

Rich Skrenta was 15 years old when he realized that his friends had wised up to his pranking technique. His modus operandi – copying games to floppy disks with a hidden program to deactivate them after 50 uses – led them eventually to seek their kicks from a different source. Rich took the hint as a challenge, and created a program that would get to them remotely. This program, called Elk Cloner, hitched rides on floppy disks from computer to computer, without the owner’s knowledge or consent. Skrenta planted a joke poem in the otherwise harmless program, but it was more than bad rhymes that he spread. The concept of a self-replicating and highly mobile program was now in the open. The computer virus was born.

Boot sector viruses, now long extinct along with the floppy disk, held a relatively long reign from 1986 to 1995. Since transmission was via disk from computer to computer, infection would only reach a significant level months or even years after its release. This changed in 1995 with the development of macro viruses, which exploited vulnerabilities in the early Windows operating systems. For four years, macro viruses reigned over the IT world and propagation times shrank to around a month from the moment when the virus was found to when it was a global problem.

As email became more widespread, so followed email worms and individual worms which reached global epidemic levels in just one day. Most notable in this connection was one of the very first emails worms, Loveletter aka ILOVEYOU, which caused widespread havoc and financial loss in 2000 before it was brought under control. In 2001, the transmission time window shrank from one day to one hour with the introduction of network worms (such as Blaster and Sasser), which automatically and indiscriminately infected every online computer without adequate protection. Email and network worms still continue to cause havoc in the IT world today.

Perhaps the most important aspect of the history of the virus is that which cannot be expressed in numbers – the social consequence. In his column, “Why there is no global antivirus software conspiracy” Jonathan Yarden wrote that “in my opinion, there are many intelligent people in the world who enjoy nothing better than creating malicious code and preying on the incompetence of people using computer systems.” His comment brings into mind the 1982 Time editorial, where futurist and M.I.T. Computer Professor Joseph Weizenbaum described the emerging generation of computer gamers as "bright young men of disheveled appearance [playing out] megalomaniacal fantasies of omnipotence." The idea that for every technological development there are a legion of solitary volunteers dedicated to bringing it down for the sheer glory of destruction is disconcerting in its own way. But though it would be easy to dismiss the viral engineers as anti-social pariahs, it is unquestionable that many of them possess a sharp insight into the average mind, which they gleefully use to devastating effect. After all, some of the most effective email viruses depend on the victim himself dealing the fatal blow. The “ILOVEYOU” virus played beautifully to the average person’s vanity, the “Make $$$ fast” ones play to our greed, and countless others simply play to our curiosity. The virus engineers may be malicious, but, like conmen and tricksters, they could not succeed nearly as well without an embarrassingly vulnerable target audience.

25 years after the birth of the virus, and the latest Man of the Year is another anomaly. It’s “You” or, as Time puts it, “User-generated Internet content.” Time was referring once again to the information revolution it once announced the arrival of – this time in the form of social networking sites and blogs. But it is hard not to be reminded of that other “user generated internet content” – the virus- which is now adapting and traveling through MySpace. We have spent 25 years with the computer virus; and on its anniversary, looking into the future, it is more than likely we will grow old together.