Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

occupying valuable space within the computer. In effect, using a computerlanguage puts you an extra step away from direct contact with the computer, andhackers generally preferred assembly or, as they called it, "machine" language toless elegant, "higher-level" languages like FORTRAN.Kotok, though, recognized that because of the huge amounts of numbers thatwould have to be crunched in a chess program, part of the program would have tobe done in FORTRAN, and part in assembly. They hacked it part by part, with"move generators," basic data structures, and all kinds of innovative algorithms forstrategy. After feeding the machine the rules for moving each piece, they gave itsome parameters by which to evaluate its position, consider various moves, andmake the move which would advance it to the most advantageous situation. Kotokkept at it for years, the program growing as MIT kept upgrading its IBMcomputers, and one memorable night a few hackers gathered to see the programmake some of its first moves in a real game. Its opener was quite respectable, butafter eight or so exchanges there was real trouble, with the computer about to becheckmated. Everybody wondered how the computer would react. It took a while(everyone knew that during those pauses the computer was actually "thinking," ifyour idea of thinking included mechanically considering various moves,evaluating them, rejecting most, and using a predefined set of parameters toultimately make a choice). Finally, the computer moved a pawn two squaresforward illegally jumping over another piece. A bug! But a clever one it got thecomputer out of check. Maybe the program was figuring out some new algorithmwith which to conquer chess.At other universities, professors were making public proclamations that computerswould never be able to beat a human being in chess. Hackers knew better. Theywould be the ones who would guide computers to greater heights than anyoneexpected. And the hackers, by fruitful, meaningful association with the computer,would be foremost among the beneficiaries.But they would not be the only beneficiaries. Everyone could gain something bythe use of thinking computers in an intellectually automated world. And wouldn'teveryone benefit even more by approaching the world with the same inquisitiveintensity, skepticism toward bureaucracy, openness to creativity, unselfishness insharing accomplishments, urge to make improvements, and desire to build as thosewho followed the Hacker Ethic? By accepting others on the same unprejudicedbasis by which computers accepted anyone who entered code into a Flexowriter?Wouldn't we benefit if we learned from computers the means of creating a perfectsystem, and set about emulating that perfection in a human system? If everyonecould interact with computers with the same innocent, productive, creative impulsethat hackers did, the Hacker Ethic might spread through society like a benevolentripple, and computers would indeed change the world for the better.