"Description In Zip" has the typical clunkiness of a backronym and the 180° theory suffers from the fact that filenames (as lloeki rightfully pointed out) were usually presented in all uppercase (even when lowercase was available) in that era.
Phonetically shortening stuff on the other hand was almost a requirement in the scene, even if you had the space.
EDIT: Thinking about it "identify this" is well in line with "read me".
I’m the biggest fan of Hackers but that scene has always irked me.
They’re all so impressed with Dade’s knowledge yet he simply appears to be reading the cover title of each book as it gets passed.
Someone please give me a meta explanation that justifies this so that my inner fanboy can sleep better at night. I’ve probably watched Hackers 100s of times. Best love story ever.
physical books weren't just given away to anyone who asked back then, so getting a copy of one is an achievement in the first place so the assumption is if you got it, you read it and by reading the title out loud he's saying I know what's in those books, like the anarchist cookbook
Lol, when I was seeing them around as a teenager I was thinking to DIZ as "dizionario" in Italian (dictionary)... of course, had I thought a bit more, I could have figured out that it was probably not Italian.
Ah, finally, another puzzlement from my childhood explained.