Levy_S-Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution

like a pair of antlers. It looked, frankly, like a piece of junk. Silver used a techniquecalled "image subtraction" to let the computer know where the bug was at any timethe camera would always be scanning the scene to see what had moved, and wouldnotice any change in its picture. Meanwhile the bug would be moving randomlyuntil the camera picked it up, and the computer directed it to the target, whichwould be a wallet which someone tossed nearby.Meanwhile, something was happening which was indicative of a continuingstruggle in this hacker haven. David Silver was getting a lot of criticism. Thecriticism came from nemeses of the Hacker Ethic: the AI theorists and gradstudents on the eighth floor. These were people who did not necessarily see theprocess of computing as a joyful end in itself: they were more concerned withgetting degrees, winning professional recognition, and the, ahem, advancement ofcomputer science. They considered hackerism unscientific. They were alwaysdemanding that hackers get off the machine so they could work on their OfficiallySanctioned Programs, and they were appalled at the seemingly frivolous uses towhich the hackers put the computer. The grad students were all in the midst ofscholarly and scientific theses and dissertations which pontificated on the difficultyof doing the kind of thing that David Silver was attempting. They would notconsider any sort of computer-vision experiment without much more planning,complete review of previous experiments, careful architecture, and a setup whichincluded pure white cubes on black velvet in a pristine, dustless room. They werefurious that the valuable time of the PDP-6 was being taken up for this ... toy! By acallow teen-ager, playing with the PDP-6 as if it were his personal go-cart.While the grad students were complaining about how David Silver was never goingto amount to anything, how David Silver wasn't doing proper AI, and how DavidSilver was never going to understand things like recursive function theory, DavidSilver was going ahead with his bug and PDP-6. Someone tossed a wallet on thegrimy, crufty floor, and the bug scooted forward, six inches a second, moved right,stopped, moved forward. And the stupid little bug kept darting forward, right, orleft until it reached the wallet, then rammed forward until the wallet was solidlybetween its "antlers" (which looked for all the world like bent shirt-hangers). Andthen the bug pushed the wallet to its designated "pen." Mission accomplished.The graduate students went absolutely nuts. They tried to get Silver booted. Theyclaimed there were insurance considerations springing from the presence of afourteen-year-old in the lab late at night. Minsky had to stand up for the kid. "It sortof drove them crazy," Silver later reflected, "because this kid would just sort ofscrew around for a few weeks and the computer would start doing the thing theywere working on that was really hard, and they were having difficulties and theyknew they would never really fully solve [the problem] and couldn't implement itin the real world. And it was all of a sudden happening and I pissed them off.