Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

Synergy. The increasing number of Homebrew members who were designing orgiving away new products, from game joysticks to i/o boards for the Altair, usedthe club as a source of ideas and early orders, and for beta-testing of theprototypes. Whenever a product was done you would bring it to the club, and getthe most expert criticism available. Then you'd distribute the technicalspecifications and the schematics if it involved software, you would distribute thesource code. Everybody could leam from it, and improve on it if they cared to andwere good enough.It was a sizzling atmosphere that worked so well because, in keeping with theHacker Ethic, no artificial boundaries were maintained. In fact, every principle ofthat Ethic, as formed by the MIT hackers, was exercised to some degree withinHomebrew. Exploration and hands-on activities were recognized as cardinalvalues; the information gathered in these explorations and ventures in design werefreely distributed even to nominal competitors (the idea of competition cameslowly to these new companies, since the struggle was to create a hacker versionof an industry a task which took all hands working together); authoritarian ruleswere disdained, and people believed that personal computers were the ultimateambassadors of decentralization; the membership ranks were open to anyonewandering in, with respect earned by expertise or good ideas, and it was notunusual to see a seventeen-year-old conversing as an equal with a prosperous,middle-aged veteran engineer; there was a keen level of appreciation of technicalelegance and digital artistry; and, above all, these hardware hackers were seeing ina vibrantly different and populist way how computers could change lives. Thesewere cheap machines that they knew were only a few years away from becomingactually useful.This, of course, did not prevent them from becoming totally immersed in hackingthese machines for the sake of hacking itself, . for the control, the quest, and thedream. Their lives were directed to that moment when the board they designed, orthe bus they wired, or the program they keyed in would take its first run... Oneperson later referred to that moment as akin to backing up a locomotive over asection of track you'd just fixed, and running it over that track at ninety miles anhour. If your track wasn't strong, the train would derail calamitously ... smoke ...fire ... twisted metal... But if you hacked well, it would rush through in anexhilarating rush. You would be jolted with the realization that thousands ofcomputations a second would be flashed through that piece of equipment withyour personal stamp on it. You, the master of information and lawgiver to a newworld.Some planners would visit Homebrew and be turned off by the technical ferocityof the discussions, the intense flame that burned brightest when people directed