Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

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! ...