Hackers, Heroes of the
Computer Revolution
Shorts
praising computer
ACOLYTE: Oh machine, would you accept my offer of information so you may run my program and perhaps give me a computation?
PRIEST (on behalf of the machine): We will try. We promise
nothing.
...but with some wild pleasure taken in mere
involvement, was called a "hack."
But McCarthy had a certain vision of what computers could do, and playing chess was only the beginning.
He was not the last administrator to feel the wrath of a hacker thwarted in the quest for access.
You could spend hours staring at the code, and
not be able to divine where the music was.
The peak hour itself was tremendously intense, but during the hours before, and even during the hours afterward, a hacker attained a state of pure concentration. When you programmed a
computer, you had to be aware of where all the thousands of bitsof information were going from one instruction to the next, and be able to predict--and exploit--the effect of all that movement. When you had all that information glued to your cerebral being, it was almost as if your own mind had merged into the environment of the computer.
ACCESS TO COMPUTERS--AND ANYTHING WHICH MIGHT TEACH YOU SOMETHING
ABOUT THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS--SHOULD BE UNLIMITED AND TOTAL.
ALWAYS YIELD TO THE HANDS-ON IMPERATIVE!
Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems--about the world--from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. They resent any person, physical barrier, or law that tries to keep them from doing this.
In a perfect hacker world, anyone pissed off enough to open up a control box near a traffic light and take it apart to make it work better should be perfectly welcome to make the attempt.
ALL INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE.
If you don't have access to the information you need to improve things, how can you fix them?
MISTRUST AUTHORITY--PROMOTE DECENTRALIZATION.
HACKERS SHOULD BE JUDGED BY THEIR HACKING, NOT BOGUS CRITERIA
SUCH AS DEGREES, AGE, RACE, OR POSITION.
YOU CAN CREATE ART AND BEAUTY ON A COMPUTER.
Well, we can do this by adding twenty numbers
COMPUTERS CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER.
Surely everyone could benefit from experiencing this power. Surely everyone could benefit from a world based on the Hacker Ethic. This was the implicit belief of the hackers, and the hackers irreverently extended the conventional point of view of what computers could and should do--leading the world to a new
way of looking and interacting with computers.
If EVERYONE could interact with computers with the same innocent, productive, creative impulse that hackers did, the Hacker Ethic might spread through society like a benevolent ripple, and computers would indeed change the world for the better.
by Steven Levy
full link free pdf
http://www.dvara.net/HK/LevyStevenHackers1&2.pdf
Computer Revolution
Shorts
praising computer
ACOLYTE: Oh machine, would you accept my offer of information so you may run my program and perhaps give me a computation?
PRIEST (on behalf of the machine): We will try. We promise
nothing.
...but with some wild pleasure taken in mere
involvement, was called a "hack."
But McCarthy had a certain vision of what computers could do, and playing chess was only the beginning.
He was not the last administrator to feel the wrath of a hacker thwarted in the quest for access.
You could spend hours staring at the code, and
not be able to divine where the music was.
The peak hour itself was tremendously intense, but during the hours before, and even during the hours afterward, a hacker attained a state of pure concentration. When you programmed a
computer, you had to be aware of where all the thousands of bitsof information were going from one instruction to the next, and be able to predict--and exploit--the effect of all that movement. When you had all that information glued to your cerebral being, it was almost as if your own mind had merged into the environment of the computer.
ACCESS TO COMPUTERS--AND ANYTHING WHICH MIGHT TEACH YOU SOMETHING
ABOUT THE WAY THE WORLD WORKS--SHOULD BE UNLIMITED AND TOTAL.
ALWAYS YIELD TO THE HANDS-ON IMPERATIVE!
Hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems--about the world--from taking things apart, seeing how they work, and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. They resent any person, physical barrier, or law that tries to keep them from doing this.
In a perfect hacker world, anyone pissed off enough to open up a control box near a traffic light and take it apart to make it work better should be perfectly welcome to make the attempt.
ALL INFORMATION SHOULD BE FREE.
If you don't have access to the information you need to improve things, how can you fix them?
MISTRUST AUTHORITY--PROMOTE DECENTRALIZATION.
HACKERS SHOULD BE JUDGED BY THEIR HACKING, NOT BOGUS CRITERIA
SUCH AS DEGREES, AGE, RACE, OR POSITION.
YOU CAN CREATE ART AND BEAUTY ON A COMPUTER.
Well, we can do this by adding twenty numbers
COMPUTERS CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE FOR THE BETTER.
Surely everyone could benefit from experiencing this power. Surely everyone could benefit from a world based on the Hacker Ethic. This was the implicit belief of the hackers, and the hackers irreverently extended the conventional point of view of what computers could and should do--leading the world to a new
way of looking and interacting with computers.
If EVERYONE could interact with computers with the same innocent, productive, creative impulse that hackers did, the Hacker Ethic might spread through society like a benevolent ripple, and computers would indeed change the world for the better.
by Steven Levy
full link free pdf
http://www.dvara.net/HK/LevyStevenHackers1&2.pdf