Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

after the meeting, Solomon was telling the hardware hackers about vril. There wassome skepticism.Outside of SLAC were huge orange picnic tables with concrete bases. Solomonhad the Homebrew people touch their hands on one of the tables, and he touchedit, too. They simply had to think it would rise.Lee Felsenstein later described the scene: "He'd said, 'Hey, let me show you... 'Wewere hanging on his every word, we'd do anything. So about six peoplesurrounded the table, put their hands on. He put his hand on top, squinted his eyesand said, 'Let's go.' And the table raised about a foot. It rose like a harmonicmotion, [as elegantly as] a sine wave. It didn't feel heavy. It just happened."Afterward, even the participants, save Solomon, were not sure that it had reallyhappened. But Lee Felsenstein, seeing another chapter close in that earthshatteringscience-fiction novel that was his life, understood the mythic impact ofthis event. They, the soldiers of the Homebrew Computer Club, had taken theirtalents and applied the Hacker Ethic to work for the common good. It was the actof working together in unison, hands-on, without the doubts caused by holdingback, which made extraordinary things occur. Even impossible things occur. TheMIT hackers had discovered that when their desire to hack led them to persist sosingle-mindedly that the barriers of security, exhaustion, and mental limits seemedto shrink away. Now, in the movement to wipe away generations of centralized,anti-hacker control of the computer industry, to change the world's disapprovingview of computers and computer people, the combined energy of hardwarehackers working together could do anything. If they did not hold back, not retreatwithin themselves, not yield to the force of greed, they could make the ideals ofhackerism ripple through society as if a pearl were dropped in a silver basin.Homebrew Club was sitting atop the power of vril.