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25th Anniversary of Hackers
theodp writes "Sharks gotta swim; bats gotta fly; hackers gotta hack. On the 25th anniversary of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, author Steven Levy has penned an interesting where-are-they-now follow up on the original digital revolutionaries for Wired. 'Some of my original subjects,' writes Levy, 'are now rich, famous, and powerful. They thrived in the movement's transition from insular subculture to multibillion-dollar industry, even if it meant rejecting some of the core hacker tenets. Others, unwilling or unable to adapt to a world that had discovered and exploited their passion — or else just unlucky — toiled in obscurity and fought to stave off bitterness. I also found a third group: the present-day heirs to the hacker legacy, who grew up in a world where commerce and hacking were never seen as opposing values. They are bringing their worldview into fertile new territories and, in doing so, are molding the future of the movement.' Here's hoping Google reads this and gets inspired to let Andy Hertzfeld ship whatever the hell he wants!" Glyn Moody pulls out one poignant detail from Levy's account: rms's thoughts of suicide.
They were often the same people, too, e.g. Woz was both varieties of hacker (which weren't that strongly differentiated anyway).
That's true. Wozniac and Jobs got their start in the tech industry building and selling blue boxes. While neither one of them denies that, they generally don't make a point of bringing it up either. Of course, the devices hadn't yet been outlawed at that point.
(For you youngsters out there, a blue box was a device that allowed you to control a telco's electronic long-distance circuit switches to your advantage.)
This ain't rocket surgery.