Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

to avoid attending future Hacker Conferences.But in the past few years, I think the tide has turned. More and more people havelearned about the spirit of true hacking as described in these pages. Not only arethe technically literate aware of hacker ideas and ideals, but they appreciate themand realize, as Brand implied, that they are something to nurture.Several things have contributed to this transformation. First was the computerrevolution itself. As the number of people using computers grew from hundreds ofthousands to hundreds of millions, the protean magic of the machine spread itsimplicit message, and those inclined to explore its powers, naturally sought outtheir antecedents.Second was the Net. Millions of people are linked together on computer networks,with the bulk of serious hackers joining the ten million people on the confederationcalled the Internet. It's a pipeline connecting people to each other, facilitatingcollaborative projects. And it's also a hotbed of conferencing and conversation, asurprising amount of it dealing with issues arising from the Hacker Ethic and itsconflicts with finances and the Real World.Finally, true hackers became cool. Under the rubric of "cyberpunk," a termappropriated from the futuristic noir novels of smart new science fiction writerslike William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Rudy Rucker, a new cultural movementemerged in the early 1990s. When the flagship publication of the movement,Mondo 2000 (a name change from Reality Hackers) began to elucidate cyberpunkprinciples, it turned out that the majority of them originated in the Hacker Ethic.The implicit beliefs of MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club (Information Should BeFree, Access to Computers Should Be Unlimited and Total, Mistrust Authority...)have been shuffled to the top of the stack.By the time cyberpunk hit the Zeitgeist, the media was ready to embrace a broader,more positive view of hacking. There were entire publications whose point of viewran parallel to hacker principles: Mondo 2000, and Wired, and loads of fanzineswith names like Intertek and Doing Boing. There was an active computer tradepress written by journalists who knew that their industry owed its existence tohackers. Even more significant, the concepts of hackerism were embraced byjournalists at the same traditional publications whose cluelessness had taintedhackerism to begin with.Once people understood what motivated hackers, it was possible to use those ideasas a measure to examine the values of Silicon Valley. At Apple Computer inparticular the hacker ideals were considered crucial to the company's well-being ...its very soul. Even more straitlaced companies came to realize that if they were to