Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

jamie dyer wrote of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, a book that I can remember reading years ago. The book does an excellent job of getting to the roots of said computer revolution, but also shows the human side to things. Read more about it below. Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution author Steven Levy pages Delt publisher 448 rating 9/10 reviewer jamiedyer ISBN 0385312105 summary Learn the roots of the revolution The Book A disclaimer. I love this book. It has its flaws, but it's an important piece of storytelling and history. It came out in 1984, back before the word "hacker" could start a flame war, and was re-issued in 1994. The people in the book are brilliant; some are dreamy-eyed utopians, some are pragmatic robber barons and some just want to hack. If nothing else, it illustrates that the current dramas being played out on slashdot, linuxtoday.com, USENET, etc. are not new ones. They go back to the beginnings of the computer industry, with many of the same personalities still involved.

A warning. I'm going to use the word "hacker" as it was originally used, i.e. NOT as the picture of a greasy haired little dope smoker trying to break into Spacely's Sprockets web server. It's a word that's sadly fallen out of favor, mostly due to lack of clue in the media.

"Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution" is broken into four parts. It starts with The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT in the late 50's and chronicles Samson, Gosper, Deutsch, Greenblatt and company as they discover the IBM 704, the TX-0 and the PDP-*, moves to Northern California in the early 70's and the rise of Apple, zeroes in on Sierra On-Line and the increasing market share of game software in the third part and ends with a view of RMS in the epilogue. But all the parts are woven together to give a cogent overview of not only the building of the computer industry, but also demonstrates that the personalities and philosophies of the hackers involved are inextricably tied to their programs and the companies they founded and/or worked for. This book also chronicles something that's important and often lost in the shuffle as of late, The Hacker Ethic. It's defined thusly in the Jargon Dictionary:

Hacker Ethic, the n. 1. The belief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writing free software and facilitating access to information and to computing resources wherever possible.

And laid out as such the in the book:

1. Access to computers should be unlimited and total.

2. Always yield to the Hands-On Imperative

   All information should be free.

   Mistrust authority--promote decentralization.

   Hackers should be judged by their hacking.

   You can create art and beauty on a computer.

   Computers can change your life for the better.

The Hacker Ethic abounds in this book, on both sides of the issue. When it comes down to it, the Hacker Ethic is what this book is about, and what all the sound and the fury currently sturming and dranging comes down to, in relation to software. What kills the ethic, it seems, is lots and lots of money and the corporate superstructure. The Homebrew Computer Club, which gave rise to many companies (biggest of the lot was Apple) is a perfect example of this. The freeflow of information was hampered when that information became a company secret. Regardless of what you think of him, Woz still pays lip service to the free exchange of information at the top of www.woz.org.

The beginning of the Greek melodrama that is now the Open/Closed Source debate is detailed quite well in this book. Some of the people in it have become more rich and famous, and some have become future Trivial Pursuit answers. But every single one helped shaped the modern computing experience to some extent.

Two little pieces of trivia from the book:

1. The original Ultima (for the Apple) was written by Lord British, real name Richard Garriot, whose father was Owen Garriot, one of the Skylab astronauts.

2. It's rumored that Gates and Allen wrote their first moneymaker, Altair BASIC, on a government funded computer ( and according to Bill Gates' Open Letter to Computer Hobbyists, it cost $40K. Wonder if they ever paid us back?:) ).

Why Should You Read This Book? Those that don't learn from history are condemned to repeat it, and each other.

I think Bob Young, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, Linus Torvalds and YOU should read this book for one very good reason. Software and hardware make up a major part of many of our lives nowadays, and to just blunder along with no sense of the past is not only foolish, it's not very graceful. Those that have made the history need to remember it, and those that are just now coming up need to learn it. If the names Ted Nelson, Adam Osborne, LISP, Greenblatt, Gosper or Slug Russell mean anything to you, you'll dig this book. Hell, even if the names mean nothing to you, and you hang out on this website, you'd probably dig it anyway. This book details the beginnings of the coder/hacker culture that is coming to fruition now. The Linux community, and the Open Source/Free Software/Whatever The Hell It's Called This Week Movement can learn a lot from it.

Also, it's just a hell of a fun read.

Purchase this book at Amazon.

Comments

Access to information

[Enoch Root]

Disclaimer: Yes, I know how I'm using hacker. Just assume hacker == cracker for this article.

Disclaimer++: I'm not flaming [cr|h]ackers nor am I denouncing the principles listed in the book's review. If anything, I'm curious to read the book. I'm outlining an apparent contradiction and trying to resolve it.

Access to computers should be unlimited and total.

I always thought that was something of a dychotomy. On one side, the hacker mindset is that all computer systems should be wide open. On the other hand, the hacker mistrusts organizations and governments.

And herein lies the contradiction: if it's alright to break into a system because you have the technical skill and invested efforts to do so, the hacker ethic says you can. Yet if a government breaks into your system, it's wrong and unethical, and a break of the sacrosanct privacy.

I think this ties in to the elitist approach to hacker standing: a hacker proves its worth by his hacks. The point being, if you have to use technical skill and cracking knowledge to get into a system, you can. If all that is being used is political weight to finance an intrusion campaign, then it's wrong, because no effort is spent on actually penetrating the system.

And so, the hacker maxim has to be revised: I think it should read, the level of information you are allowed to get is proportional to the skill you display.

And so we're back to an elitist system, where not much thought is given to equality, but where strength determines the level of freedom you have. I can't help but feel this is a wrong system, because it sounds like anarchy without concern for the other members of your society. The law of the jungle, if you will.

Anyone wish to contradict me? I'd love to know what you guys think.

"There is no surer way to ruin a good discussion than to contaminate it with the facts."

There *is* Glory in Software Engineering

[RNG]

Hackers (the book) simply rules. If you are into the whole OpenSource/GNU mindset, you should really read this book. If nothing else, it will trace back some of the historial roots of the whole hacking scene which in turn serves as a good example of the openness which ruled at MIT labs (and of course other places) in the beginning of the computer age, when computers were huge monstrosities which were rarely seen by normal mortals.

The other thing which I remember from reading Hackers, was a sort of vague feeling (which I've since refined a bit) of being a disciple of an art rather than just a programmer. The way I look at this (for myself) is, that yes, I'm payed by my employer, but my ultimate allegiance is to the field of computers, not to any particular manifestation of it (such as a company). As such the field (art) itself means much more to me than any one company and Linux (to me) is the/an embodyment of this spirit ... by engineers, for engineers, from each according to his interestes and possibilities. It is this purity of vision/interest that I miss in most people I meet in the field ...

This book drives home the fact the openness of information (or source code for us geeks) is a good thing, a concept that a few years ago seemed to wither away and which has now been (due to the success of Linux) thrust again into the public's view. If you want a good read of where much of this comes from, read Hackers ...