Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

keeping a list of everyone's phone number and what equipment everyone owned.As he later recalled, "My phone rang off the hook. It was incredible. Everybodyneeded information, and they needed each other in order to get going becausethere was an absolute paucity of equipment. For example: 'If you have a terminalcould I borrow it for a couple days while I get my program in it so it'll read mypunch paper tape reader?' That sort of thing."But in other respects, particularly in the way he moderated the meetings, French'sstyle was not consistent with the hacker spirit brewing in Homebrew. "Gordon wasa didactic sort," Lee Felsen-stein would later recall. "He would try to push thediscussion to where he wanted it to go. He wanted it to be an educational event,holding lectures, teaching people about certain things, especially stuff he wasexpert on. He was very upset if the discussion strayed from people literallyteaching other people in a schoolish sense. He would jump into whatever peoplewere saying and get involved in the content, injecting his opinions and tellingthem 'There's an important point that shouldn't be missed, and I know more aboutthis kind of stuff.' " After the first part of the meeting, in which people wouldintroduce themselves and say what they were working on, Gordon would stand upin front of the room and give what amounted to a tutorial, explaining the way themachine uses the code you feed into it, and informing the restless members howlearning good coding habits will save you headaches in the future ... and sooner orlater people would get so impatient they'd slip out of the meetings and startexchanging information in the hall. It was a touchy situation, the kind of complexhuman dilemma that hackers don't generally like to confront. But the feelingemerged that a new moderator should take over.The logical choice might have been Fred Moore, who sat in the front of the roomfor the first few months of Homebrew with his tape recorder and notebook,capturing the meeting so he could summarize highlights in the newsletter he putout every month. He was putting a lot of his time into the group, because he sawthat the hackers and their Altairs were on the verge of what might be a significantsocial force. "By sharing our experience and exchanging tips we advance the stateof the art and make low-cost computing possible for more folks," he wrote in thenewsletter, adding his social commentary: "The evidence is overwhelming thatpeople want computers, probably for self-entertainment and education usage. Whydid the Big Companies miss this market? They were busy selling overpricedmachines to each other (and the government and the military). They don't want tosell directly to the public. I'm all in favor of the splash MITS is having with theAltair because it will do three things: (1) force the awakening of other companiesto the demand for low-cost computers in the home ... (2) cause local computerclubs and hobby groups to form to fill the technical knowledge vacuum, (3) helpdemystify computers..."