Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

magazine show. NBC shot the requisite footage of Roberta mapping a newadventure game at her home, Ken going over his phone messages, Ken andRoberta touring the building site of their new home. But the NBC producer wasparticularly anxious to speak to the heart of the company: the young programmers.Whiz kids writing games and getting rich. The programmers, those in-house andthose working for royalties, were duly assembled at the programming office.The NBC producer, with his gray hair, bushy moustache, and twinkling eyes,resembled a carnival barker who knows the gruesome ropes, yet has maintainedcompassion. He urged the programmers to play at the terminals so his crew couldshoot an establishing shot of a thriving factory that measured production by linesof computer code. One of the hackers immediately began concocting a program tocreate a twenty-one-sided flower on the screen a program involving the retentionof the value of pi to the sixth decimal place. Even after the NBC crew finished theestablishing shot, the teen-age programmer felt compelled to finish the displayhack.The producer by then was interviewing one of Ken's twenty-one-year-old whizkids."Where is the industry going?" he asked him solemnly.The whiz kid stared at the producer. "I have no idea," he said.