Patrick K. Kroupa

File:Patrick Kroupa01 2005.jpg

Patrick K. Kroupa, 2005.

Patrick Karel Kroupa (also known as Lord Digital, born January 20, 1969 in Los Angeles, California) is an American writer, hacker, and cyberculture icon. Kroupa was a member of the legendary Legion of Doom hacker group and co-founded MindVox in 1991, with Bruce Fancher. He was a heroin addict from age 14 to 30, and got clean through the use of the hallucinogenic drug, ibogaine.

Early Years

Patrick Kroupa was part of the first generation to grow up with home computers and network access. In numerous interviews he has repeatedly cited two events which were pivotal 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 NCAR (the National Center for Atmospheric Research) 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 own use around this time, he would have been 7 or 8 years old at the time.

The second event was walking into the ending of the final generation of Abbie Hoffman's YIPL (Youth International Party Lines) / TAP (Technological Assistance Program) counter-culture/Yippie meetings that were taking place in New York City's Lower East Side, during the early 80's. Kroupa again lists this event, repeatedly in interviews, as opening many new doors for him and changing his perceptions about technology.

File:PatrickKroupa80s.jpg

Patrick K. Kroupa, late 1980's.

TAP predated 2600 by decades and at the time of the TAP meetings, 2600 magazine did not yet exist. 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 life-long friend, Bruce Fancher; Yippie/Medical Marijuana activist Dana Beal (The Theoretician), who was part of the Captain Crunch/Abbie Hoffman, technologically-inclined branch of the counter-culture and perhaps most important: Herbert Hunke, who along with John Draper (Captain Crunch) spent much of their time living in Dana Beal's basement at the infamous #9 Bleecker Street.

Herbert Hunke's best-known claim to fame, is being the man who turned William Burroughs on to heroin. While Burroughs was an exception to nearly everything most people may consider human, Hunke's actions were not. Although Hunke was known as a beat poet and writer, he was also living in squalor, homeless part of the time and surviving through petty crimes and selling heroin and turning anybody he came into contact with, onto the drug. Hunke was also the person who first introduced Kroupa to heroin at age 14; the drug that nearly killed him, helped destroy the company behind MindVox while creating the legend and myth that MindVox became; and laid the foundations for what Kroupa himself was to become in the 21st. century.

With the exception of the counter-cultural and hard-drug elements, the preceding history made Kroupa part of a small group, made up of a few hundred kids who were either wealthy enough to afford home computers in the late 70's, or had technologically-savvy families who understood the potentials of what the machines could do. 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.

Kroupa was a member of the first Pirate/Cracking crew to ever exist for the Apple ][ computer: The Apple Mafia; as well as various phreaking/hacking groups, the most high-profile being: the Knights of Shadow and his last group association: the legendary Legion of Doom.

Bibliography

Essays

Voices In My Head MindVox: The Overture (1992), Patrick K. Kroupa. [1], [2], [3]

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. [4], [5]

The Secret Service is Neither (1994), Patrick K. Kroupa. Mondo 2000.

Heroin Times: Ibogaine Series (2000-2003), Patrick K. Kroupa. Heroin Times.

Medical Journals

Ibogaine: Treatment Outcomes and Observations (2003), Patrick K. Kroupa (Junk the Magic Dragon) & Hattie Wells (Epoptica). MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, 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).