The Conscience of the Hacker

What the person in The Conscience of the Hacker was trying to do was prove a point, that schools don't teach the things you want to learn it's all repetitive to him, and hacking interested him because it was something new. He also wanted to make clear not all hackers are criminals ,they are just doing what interests them. The tone of the essay was serious and spiteful because he wasn't joking around about the issues he discussed and he wasn't happy about the accusations that he was a criminal.