Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

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The computer is more interesting than most people. I love to spendtime with my computer. It is fun to write programs for it, playgames on it, and to build new parts for it. It is fascinating to try tofigure out what part of the program it is in by the way the lightsnicker or the radio buzzes. It beats dull conversation any day.The computer needs just a little more (memory) (speed)(peripherals) (better BASIC) (newer CPU) (noise suppression on thebus) (debugging on this program) (powerful editor) (bigger powersupply) before it can do this or that.There is no need to buy this software package or that circuitboard; Ican design one better.Never miss a club meeting. This is where it's at. The juicy littlenews bits, the how-to-fixits for the problem that has been buggingme the last two weeks ... that is the real thing! Besides, they mighthave some free software.Pittman's tone shifted at that point. He forced himself to take exception to thosearticles of faith, testifying that he had "been there" and seen the problems withthem. Point by point he demonstrated the folly of hacking, and concluded bywriting: "By now the computer has moved out of the den and into the rest of yourlife. It will consume all of your spare time, and even your vacation, if you let it. Itwill empty your wallet and tie up your thoughts. It will drive away your family.Your friends will start to think of you as a bore. And what for?"Shaken by the breakup of his marriage, Tom Pittman decided to change his habits.And he did. He later described the transformation: "I take a day of rest now. Iwon't turn on the computer on Sunday. The other six days, I'll work like a dog."Lee Felsenstein was gaining confidence and purpose through his role astoastmaster of the Homebrew Computer Club. His express desire was to allow theclub to develop as an anarchist community, a society of non-joiners wed, whetherthey knew it or not, by the Propaganda of the Deed. He saw what Moore andFrench didn't: for maximum political effect in the war of the hardware hackersagainst the evil forces of IBM and such, the strategy should reflect the style ofhackerism itself. This meant that the club would never be run like a formal
ureaucracy.If he desired a blueprint for failure, he need only look to the south, at the SouthernCalifornia Computer Society. Starting up a few months after Homebrew's firstmeeting, SCCS took advantage of the hobbyists in the electronics-intensive area(almost all the high-tech defense contractors are in Southern California) to quicklyboost its membership to eight thousand. Its leaders were not happy with the mereexchange of information: they envisioned group buying plans, a nationalmagazine, and an influence which would allow hobbyists to dictate terms to thegrowing microcomputer industry. Homebrew had no steering committee to conferon goals and directions; it only incorporated as an afterthought, almost a year afterinception; it had no real dues requirements only a suggested contribution of tendollars a year to get its modest newsletter. But SCCS had a formal board ofdirectors, whose regular meetings were often sparked by acrimonious debates onWhat the Club Should Be. It wasn't long before SCCS was publishing a slickmagazine, had a growing group buying program (as much as forty thousanddollars a month), and was considering changing its name to the National ComputerSociety.Bob Marsh, hawking Processor Technology boards, often flew down to the packedSCCS meetings, and even sat on the SCCS board for a few months. He laterdescribed the difference between the two groups: "Homebrew was a place wherepeople came together mysteriously, twice a month. It never was an organization.But SCCS was more organized. Those guys had megalomania. The politics wereterrible, and ruined it." Somehow, the particulars never became clear, a lot ofmoney was misplaced in the buying scheme. The editor they hired to run the slickmagazine felt justified in dropping the publication's relationship with the club andgoing off on his own with the magazine (still publishing as Interface Age); alawsuit resulted. The board meetings became incredibly tempestuous, and the badfeelings spread to the general membership meetings. Eventually the club fadedaway.Though Lee's plans were no less ambitious than those of the leaders of SCCS, herealized that this war must not be waged in a bureaucratic, follow-the-leaderfashion. He was perfectly happy dealing with an army of Bob Marshes and TomPittmans, some changing the world by dint of useful products manufactured in thespirit of hackerism and others just going their way, being hackers. The eventualgoal would be a mass distribution of the wonderment that Lee Felsenstein hadexperienced in his basement monastery. An environment conducive to the Hands-On Imperative. As Lee told a conference of the Institute of Electrical andElectronic Engineers in 1975, "The industrial approach is grim and doesn't work:the design motto is 'Design by Geniuses for Use by Idiots,' and the watchword fordealing with the untrained and unwashed public is KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF! ...
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HACKERSHeroes of the Computer Revol
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Contents●●●●●●●●●
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hero.Hackers like Richard Greenblat
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Steve DompierHomebrew member who fi
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"Uncle" John McCarthyAbsent-minded
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Dan SokolLong-haired prankster who
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Part OneTrue HackersCambridge:The F
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these machines to punch holes in th
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The clubroom was dominated by the h
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That spring of 1959, a new course w
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of course, was what those Signals a
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officious priests. The technician i
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Deutsch's comments would turn out t
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At that time, only a few people in
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Carroll's poem with the line "The t
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2The Hacker EthicSOMETHING new was
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that easy flow of information.Mistr
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instruction which contained the num
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focus, made their lives adventurous
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occupying valuable space within the
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3SpacewarIN the summer of 1961, Ala
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was a brand-new firm called Digital
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Dennis had written the original of
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The TMRC hackers were not the only
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exerted on others were totally outl
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All of this was actually a signific
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that often formed in the aftermath
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heavy star would be in the center,
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F. J. Corbate, who would seek some
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changed irrevocably the day in 1954
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doing. Then you can see your offspr
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709, or working routines with a new
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hacking them, he would. He would si
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They went back loaded with Chinese
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Though some hackers led somewhat ac
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Despite these odd personal traits,
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impossible was a useful LISP on a P
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opponent could get out of this was
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Dance, phone lines, dance!And the s
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oxes" hardware devices to make ille
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showed up on the ninth floor to wor
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Gosper's forte, and he did some ear
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the companionship of fellow hackers
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master key was a magic sword to wav
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sanctified objects, things you nurt
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6Winners and LosersBY 1966, when Da
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instead of sailing past the end of
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like a pair of antlers. It looked,
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made the same stupid mistake. Only
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"Well, it has them, it's just that
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their PDP-6, and you had one loser
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on a data disk accessible by the co
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system, Greenblatt and the rest exe
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create useful concepts and tools to
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7LIFETHEY would later call it a Gol
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seriously. These were the days of t
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Sometimes the hacker failure to be
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later: "It was sort of necessary fo
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explored in the Adventure world wer
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and weird patterns established in t
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etter program. Greenblatt howled in
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The world.As much as the hackers tr
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mainframe machine in the basement o
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He loved the idea of electronics. H
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But the war was just beginning. For
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month he rented a room. It was belo
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expose people, especially kids, to
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Harbor, about thirty miles south of
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liberal arts colleges. Nelson was a
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Page 142 and 143: 9Every Man a GodJ.N June 1974, Lee
Page 144 and 145: microprocessor.Lee Felsenstein, in
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Page 150 and 151: kinds of gratification that a human
Page 152 and 153: would come out of these systems was
Page 154 and 155: company to help out in the crunch,
Page 156 and 157: dreaming of things to put in it to
Page 158 and 159: things done.Bob Albrecht did not li
Page 160 and 161: Fred Moore had set up a table in th
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Page 164 and 165: Bob Marsh understood that this was
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Page 176 and 177: themselves to the hacker pursuit of
Page 178 and 179: after the meeting, Solomon was tell
Page 180 and 181: eaders), you would have a way to wr
Page 182 and 183: held at Albuquerque a year after th
Page 184 and 185: you steal your software. Hardware m
Page 186 and 187: fun," he later explained. Knowing s
Page 188 and 189: But by then the possibility of maki
Page 192 and 193: The convivial approach I suggest wo
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Page 200 and 201: oards); a 30-chip TV display. Skill
Page 202 and 203: He turned to computer programming,
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Page 206 and 207: Years later, the people attending t
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Page 214 and 215: So the Apple people were prepared t
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Page 218 and 219: 13SecretsTED Nelson's speech was no
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Page 228 and 229: Part ThreeGame HackersThe Sierras:T
Page 230 and 231: faded blue T-shirt. He had driven u
Page 232 and 233: A more important relationship to Ke
Page 234 and 235: Ken had gotten a taste of this more
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Page 238 and 239: For most of her life Roberta Willia
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was hard to control the writing mec
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Ken and Roberta bought the first co
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porno books.An excursion to the loc
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player's little tank. Jewell sugges
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Margot and Al, in her words, "becam
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of its founders. You almost had to
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16The Third GenerationTHERE were st
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where you try to get a guy to the t
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screen; "user definable characters"
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dozens of new software companies th
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Ken had. already been marketing a P
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home and reprogrammed the graphics.
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If Ken Williams released a game tha
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law was in a case in which some pri
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virtual copy of Pac-Man!But the jud
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employees. People played a continuo
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peppermint schnapps which was On-Li
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a sort of rehabilitation project on
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At that time Warren was working at
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opportunity and he should take it.
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Ken Williams took the concerns of h
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was really easy to talk to. We talk
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Line community.Ken was hugely proud
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easily as John Harris had lent his
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The instant that John Harris ended
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and patterned after Billboard's rec
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This was quite a step from the earl
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tweaking a marketing plan here, deb
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A week before Dick arrived, Ken was
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whole company to come to the site o
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Line hackers gathered at places lik
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Guinness Book of World Records cham
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magazine show. NBC shot the requisi
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subsidized by some institution. The
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While still in high school, he land
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Ken basically wanted a fairly relia
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Apple bestseller. But when Lord Bri
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estseller. After flying the young a
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important Applefests. For one thing
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This message managed to find its wa
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They noticed right away because Fro
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that the action was switching to tr
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20Wizard vs. WizardsIN December of
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things look good on television. Tat
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now I just spend my time skiing the
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The author of the twelfth bestselli
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even the furniture, upside down wer
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things to Ken about On-Line that he
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The company's energy became focused
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The techniques, algorithms, and cro
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e more precarious than it had first
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hacker paradise, the Tech Square mo
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around the country all because the
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could easily handle the considerabl
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minimum.Noftsker considered this un
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in with the bad guys here. But I'm
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with concern when he spoke of Stall
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Generation hacker. With many more g
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Afterword: Ten Years After"I think
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to avoid attending future Hacker Co
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(though not gender specific) called
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Joseph We-izenbaum, Randy Wigginton
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* Gosper's memo is part of "Hakmem,
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Delta, 1979).* "The winning isn't a
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