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//-->HackersSteven LevyEditorMike HendricksonCopyright © 2010 Steven LevyO’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use. Online editions are also available for most titlescorporate@oreilly.com.The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc. Hackers and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media,Inc.Many of the designations used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. Where thosedesignations appear in this book, and O’Reilly Media, Inc. was aware of a trademark claim, the designations have been printed in caps orinitial caps.While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, the publisher and authors assume no responsibility for errors oromissions, or for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.O'Reilly MediaSPECIAL OFFER: Upgrade this ebook with O’ReillyClick here for more information on this offer!Please note that upgrade offers are not available from sample content.PrefaceI was first drawn to writing about hackers—those computer programmers and designers who regardcomputing as the most important thing in the world—because they were such fascinating people.Though some in the field used the term “hacker” as a form of derision, implying that hackers wereeither nerdy social outcasts or “unprofessional” programmers who wrote dirty, “nonstandard”computer code, I found them quite different. Beneath their often unimposing exteriors, they wereadventurers, visionaries, risk-takers, artists . . . and the ones who most clearly saw why the computerwas a truly revolutionary tool. Among themselves, they knew how far one could go by immersioninto the deep concentration of the hacking mind-set: one could go infinitely far. I came to understandwhy true hackers consider the term an appellation of honor rather than a pejorative.As I talked to these digital explorers, ranging from those who tamed multimillion-dollar machines inthe 1950s to contemporary young wizards who mastered computers in their suburban bedrooms, Ifound a common element, a common philosophy that seemed tied to the elegantly flowing logic ofthe computer itself. It was a philosophy of sharing, openness, decentralization, and getting your handson machines at any cost to improve the machines and to improve the world. This Hacker Ethic is theirgift to us: something with value even to those of us with no interest at all in computers.It is an ethic seldom codified but embodied instead in the behavior of hackers themselves. I would liketo introduce you to these people who not only saw, but lived the magic in the computer and worked toliberate the magic so it could benefit us all. These people include the true hackers of the MIT artificialintelligence lab in the fifties and sixties; the populist, less sequestered hardware hackers in Californiain the seventies; and the young game hackers who made their mark in the personal computer of theeighties.This is in no way a formal history of the computer era, or of the particular arenas I focus upon.Indeed, many of the people you will meet here are not the most famous names (certainly not the mostwealthy) in the annals of computing. Instead, these are the backroom geniuses who understood themachine at its most profound levels and presented us with a new kind of lifestyle and a new kind ofhero.Hackers like Richard Greenblatt, Bill Gosper, Lee Felsenstein, and John Harris are the spirit and soulof computing itself. I believe their story—their vision, their intimacy with the machine itself, theirexperiences inside their peculiar world, and their sometimes dramatic, sometimes absurd “interfaces”with the outside world—is the real story of the computer revolution.Who’s Who: The Wizards and Their MachinesBob Albrecht.Founder of People’s Computer Company who took visceral pleasure in exposingyoungsters to computers.Altair 8800. The pioneering microcomputer that galvanized hardware hackers. Building this kit madeyou learn hacking. Then you tried to figure out what to do with it.Apple II.Steve Wozniak’s friendly, flaky, good-looking computer, wildly successful and the sparkand soul of a thriving industry.Atari 800.This home computer gave great graphics to game hackers like John Harris, though thecompany that made it was loath to tell you how it worked.Bob and Carolyn Box.World-record-holding gold prospectors turned software stars, working forSierra On-Line.Doug Carlston. Corporate lawyer who chucked it all to form the Brøderbund software company.Bob Davis.Left a job in a liquor store to become the bestselling author of the Sierra On-Linecomputer game Ulysses and the Golden Fleece. Success was his downfall.Peter Deutsch. Bad in sports, brilliant at math, Peter was still in short pants when he stumbled on theTX-0 at MIT—and hacked it along with the masters.Steve Dompier. Homebrew member who first made Altair sing, and later wrote the Target game onthe Sol, which entranced Tom Snyder.John Draper.The notorious “Captain Crunch” who fearlessly explored phone systems, was jailed,and later hacked microcomputers. Cigarettes made him violent.Mark Duchaineau. The young Dungeonmaster who copy-protected On-Line’s disks at his whim.Chris Espinosa. Fourteen-year-old follower of Steve Wozniak and early Apple employee.Lee Felsenstein.Former “military editor” of theBerkeley Barband hero of an imaginary science-fiction novel, he designed computers with a “junkyard” approach and was a central figure in BayArea hardware hacking in the seventies.Ed Fredkin.Gentle founder of Information International, he thought himself the world’s greatestprogrammer until he met Stew Nelson. Father figure to hackers.Gordon French.Silver-haired hardware hacker whose garage held not cars but his homebrewedChicken Hawk computer, then held the first Homebrew Computer Club meeting.Richard Garriott. Astronaut’s son who, as Lord British, created the Ultima world on computer disks.Bill Gates.Cocky wizard and Harvard dropout who wrote Altair BASIC, and complained whenhackers copied it.Bill Gosper. Horowitz of computer keyboards, master math and LIFE hacker at MIT AI lab, guru ofthe Hacker Ethic, and student of Chinese restaurant menus.Richard Greenblatt.Single-minded, unkempt, prolific, and canonical MIT hacker who went intonight phase so often that he zorched his academic career. The hacker ’s hacker.John Harris. The young Atari 800 game hacker who became Sierra On-Line’s star programmer, butyearned for female companionship.IBM PC.IBM’s entry into the personal computer market, which amazingly included a bit of theHacker Ethic and took over.IBM 704.IBM was The Enemy and this was its machine, the Hulking Giant computer in MIT’sBuilding 26. Later modified into the IBM 709, then the IBM 7090. Batch-processed and intolerable.
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