Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

the companionship of fellow hackers. He moved into a house with Gosper and twoothers. Although this "Hacker House" was in nearby Belmont, then shifted toBrighton, Nelson resisted buying a car. He couldn't stand driving. "It takes toomuch processing to deal with the road," he would later explain. He would takepublic transportation, or get a ride from another hacker, or even take a cab. Once hegot to Tech Square, he was good for hours: Nelson was among those hackers whohad settled on the twenty-eight-hour-day, six-day-week routine. He didn't worryabout classes he figured that he could get whatever job he wanted whether he had adegree or not, so he never did rematriculate.Nelson was completely a creature of the Hacker Ethic, and the influence of hisbehavior was a contributing factor to the cultural and scientific growth of the AIlab. If Minsky needed someone to point out why a certain subroutine was notworking, he would go to Nelson. Meanwhile, Nelson would be all over the place.Working for Fredkin, doing systems work with Greenblatt, display hacking withGosper, and creating all sorts of strange things. He hacked a weird connectionbetween the Triple-I computer on the seventh floor and the PDP-6 on the ninthwhich sent signals between an oscilloscope on one line and a TV camera onanother. He pulled off all sorts of new phone hacks. And, again more by examplethan by organizing, he was a leader in the hallowed black art of lock hacking."Lock hacking" was the skillful solution of physical locks, whether on doors, filecabinets, or safes. To some extent, the practice was an MIT tradition, especiallyaround TMRC. But once it was combined with the Hacker Ethic, lock hackingbecame more of a crusade than an idle game, though the playful challenge ofovercoming artificial obstacles contributed to lock backing's popularity.To a hacker, a closed door is an insult, and a locked door is an outrage. Just asinformation should be clearly and elegantly transported within a computer, and justas software should be freely disseminated, hackers believed people should beallowed access to files or tools which might promote the hacker quest to find outand improve the way the world works. When a hacker needed something to helphim create, explore, or fix, he did not bother with such ridiculous concepts asproperty rights.Say you are working on the PDP-6 one night, and it goes down. You check itsinnards and discover that it needs a part. Or you may need a tool to install a part.Then you discover that what you need a disk, a tape, a screwdriver, a solderingiron, a spare IC (integrated circuit) is locked up somewhere. A million dollars'worth of hardware wasted and idle, because the hardware wizard who knows how