Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

ooks, he later said, gave him courage to dream big, to try out risky projects, and to rise above hisown emotional conflicts. The great fight was not so much internal as broad it was the choicebetween good and evil. Taking that romantic notion to heart, Lee saw himself as the ordinary personwith potential who is seized by circumstances, chooses the difficult path of siding with the good,and embarks on a long odyssey to overthrow evil.It was not long before Lee was able to apply this metaphor in reality. After graduation, he went tothe University of California at Berkeley to matriculate in Electrical Engineering. He was unable toget a scholarship. His freshman year did not parallel that of a typical MIT hacker: he more or lesstoed the line, failing to qualify for a scholarship by a fraction of a grade point. But he got whatseemed as good a work-study job at NASA's Flight Research Center at Edwards Air Force Base, atthe edge of the Mohave Desert. To Lee, it was admission to Paradise the language people spokethere was electronics, rocket electronics, and the schematics he had studied would now betransmogrified into the stuff of science fiction come alive. He reveled in it, the brotherhood ofengineers, loved wearing a tie, walking out of an office and seeing neat rows of other offices, andwater coolers. Heinlein was forgotten Lee was comforming, an engineer out of a cookie cutter.Deliri-ously happy in the service of the Prophet. Then, after two months of that "seventh heaven,"as he later called it, he was summoned to a meeting with a security officer.The officer seemed ill at ease. He was accompanied by a witness to the proceedings. The officerkept notes and had Lee sign each page as he finished it. He also had the form Lee had filled outupon entering Edwards, Security Form 398. The officer kept asking Lee if he knew anyone whowas a member of the Communist Party. And Lee kept saying no. Finally he asked, in a gentle voice,"Don't you understand that your parents were Communists?"Lee had never been told. He had assumed that "Communist" was just a term, red-baiting, thatpeople flung at activist liberals like his parents. His brother had known his brother had been namedafter Stalin! but Lee had not been told. He had been perfectly honest when he had filled out Form398 with a clear "no" on the line that asked if you knew any known Communists."So there I was, ejected from Paradise," Lee would later say, "and the security chief said, 'You keepyour nose clean for a couple years more, you won't have any problem getting back in.' Now I'dalways been setting myself up to be abandoned, always expected to be abandoned. Suddenly I was.Literally thrown out in the wilderness. There's the Mohave Desert out there, for God's sake!"On the night of October 14, 1964, Lee Felsenstein, failed engineer, took a train back to Berkeley.Lee had heard radio reports of student demonstrations there beginning two weeks before; he haddismissed them as a modem version of the legendary panty raids that had occurred in 1952. Butupon his return he found the whole community alive with the Free Speech Movement. "Secrecy isthe keystone of all tyranny," said Heinlein's Revolt in 2100 protagonist, voicing not only the cry ofBerkeley revolution, but the Hacker Ethic. Lee Felsenstein made the leap he joined the Cabal. Buthe would merge his fervor with his own particular talent. He would use technology to fuel therevolt.Since he owned a tape recorder, he went to Press Central, the media center of the movement, andoffered his talents as an audio technician. He did a little of everything: mimeographed, did shitwork. He was inspired by the decentralized structure of the Free Speech Movement. On December2, when over eight hundred students occupied Sproul Hall, Lee was there with his tape recorder. Hewas arrested, of course, but the administration backed down on the issues. The battle had been won.