Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution 1st Edition

by Steven Levy (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-1449388393

ISBN-10: 1449388396

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Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
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This 25th anniversary edition of Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers -- those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zukerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.

Levy profiles the imaginative brainiacs who found clever and unorthodox solutions to computer engineering problems. They had a shared sense of values, known as "the hacker ethic," that still thrives today. Hackers captures a seminal period in recent history when underground activities blazed a trail for today's digital world, from MIT students finagling access to clunky computer-card machines to the DIY culture that spawned the Altair and the Apple II.

Amazon.com Exclusive: The Rant Heard Round the World
By Steven Levy

Author Steven Levy When I began researching Hackers--so many years ago that it’s scary--I thought I’d largely be chronicling the foibles of a sociologically weird cohort who escaped normal human interaction by retreating to the sterile confines of computers labs. Instead, I discovered a fascinating, funny cohort who wound up transforming human interaction, spreading a culture that affects our views about everything from politics to entertainment to business. The stories of those amazing people and what they did is the backbone of Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution.

But when I revisited the book recently to prepare the 25th Anniversary Edition of my first book, it was clear that I had luckily stumbled on the origin of a computer (and Internet) related controversy that still permeates the digital discussion. Throughout the book I write about something I called The Hacker Ethic, my interpretation of several principles implicitly shared by true hackers, no matter whether they were among the early pioneers from MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Club (the Mesopotamia of hacker culture), the hardware hackers of Silicon Valley’s Homebrew Computer Club (who invented the PC industry), or the slick kid programmers of commercial game software. One of those principles was “Information Should Be Free.” This wasn’t a justification of stealing, but an expression of the yearning to know more so one could hack more. The programs that early MIT hackers wrote for big computers were stored on paper tapes. The hackers would keep the tapes in a drawer by the computer so anyone could run the program, change it, and then cut a new tape for the next person to improve. The idea of ownership was alien.

This idea came under stress with the advent of personal computers. The Homebrew Club was made of fanatic engineers, along with a few social activists who were thrilled at the democratic possibilities of PCs. The first home computer they could get their hands on was 1975’s Altair, which came in a kit that required a fairly hairy assembly process. (Its inventor was Ed Roberts, an underappreciated pioneer who died earlier this year.) No software came with it. So it was a big deal when 19-year-old Harvard undergrad Bill Gates and his partner Paul Allen wrote a BASIC computer language for it. The Homebrew people were delighted with Altair BASIC, but unhappy that Gates and Allen charged real money for it. Some Homebrew people felt that their need for it outweighed their ability to pay. And after one of them got hold of a “borrowed” tape with the program, he showed up at a meeting with a box of copies (because it is so easy to make perfect copies in the digital age), and proceeded to distribute them to anyone who wanted one, gratis.

This didn’t sit well with Bill Gates, who wrote what was to become a famous “Letter to Hobbyists,” basically accusing them of stealing his property. It was the computer-age equivalent to Luther posting the Ninety-Five Theses on the Castle Church. Gate’s complaints would reverberate well into the Internet age, and variations on the controversy persist. Years later, when another undergrad named Shawn Fanning wrote a program called Napster that kicked off massive piracy of song files over the Internet, we saw a bloodier replay of the flap. Today, issues of cost, copying and control still rage--note Viacom’s continuing lawsuit against YouTube and Google. And in my own business—journalism--availability of free news is threatening more traditional, expensive new-gathering. Related issues that also spring from controversies in Hackers are debates over the “walled gardens” of Facebook and Apple’s iPad.

I ended the original Hackers with a portrait of Richard Stallman, an MIT hacker dedicated to the principle of free software. I recently revisited him while gathering new material for the 25th Anniversary Edition of Hackers, he was more hard core than ever. He even eschewed the Open Source movement for being insufficiently noncommercial.

When I spoke to Gates for the update, I asked him about his 1976 letter and the subsequent intellectual property wars. “Don’t call it war,” he said. “Thank God we have an incentive system. Striking the right balance of how this should work, you know, there's going to be tons of exploration.” Then he applied the controversy to my own situation as a journalism. “Things are in a crazy way for music and movies and books,” he said. “Maybe magazine writers will still get paid 20 years from now. Who knows? Maybe you'll have to cut hair during the day and just write articles at night.”

So Amazon.com readers, it’s up to you. Those who have not read Hackers,, have fun and be amazed at the tales of those who changed the world and had a hell of time doing it. Those who have previously read and loved Hackers, replace your beat-up copies, or the ones you loaned out and never got back, with this beautiful 25th Anniversary Edition from O’Reilly with new material about my subsequent visits with Gates, Stallman, and younger hacker figures like Mark Zuckerberg of Facebook. If you don’t I may have to buy a scissors--and the next bad haircut could be yours!

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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Levy is a senior writer for Wired. Previously, he was chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has written six books and had articles published in Harper's, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Premiere, and Rolling Stone. Steven has won several awards during his 30+ years of writing about technology, including Hackers, which PC Magazine named the best Sci-Tech book written in the last twenty years and, Crypto, which won the grand eBook prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book festival.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (June 15, 2010)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 520 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1449388396
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1449388393
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.4 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.5 x 1.2 x 8.5 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #117,776 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #23 in Computing Industry History
- #92 in Computer Hacking
- #200 in Software Development (Books)

Customer Reviews:
457 ratings

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Steven Levy

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Levy is editor at large at Wired. Previous positions include editor in chief at Backchannel; and chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek. In early 2020, his book "Facebook: The Inside Story" will appear, the product of over three years studying the company, which granted unprecedented access to its employees and executives. Levy has written previous seven books and has had articles published in Harper's, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Premiere, and Rolling Stone. Steven has won several awards during his 30+ years of writing about technology, including Hackers, which PC Magazine named the best Sci-Tech book written in the last twenty years and, Crypto, which won the grand eBook prize at the 2001 Frankfurt Book festival. "In the Plex," the definitive book on Google, was named the Best Business Book of 2011 on both Amazon and Audible.

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Jacopo

A well-written account of computer pioneers - just make sure you're interested in this stuff

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 27, 2008

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As the description mentions, Steven Levy's "Hackers" is not about computer criminals, but refers to the more traditional definition of "someone who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a computer and computer network." I purchased this book because I was intrigued with Sierra On-Line, and was interested in learning more about some of the founding software companies and people who became rich from the computer boom of the early 80s. Having just finished Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet about the creation of the Internet, and being bored out of my mind with it, I was hoping "Hackers" would be a little more exciting. Unfortunately, the first half of the book mirrors "Wizards" in a lot of ways and discusses much of the same content. What's more, before purchasing, I had no idea this book was published in 1984 and that it would naturally only discuss computers up to the early 80s.

"Hackers" is divided into three parts:

1. True Hackers - 1946 - mid 70s. This section focuses on the early computer pioneers at MIT, such as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the Lincoln Laboratory, and experimenting with large mainframes such as the PDP-1 and TX-0. It describes in detail how they would spend hours punching in code for these computers to come up with the simplest hacks. I struggled to get through this section. It was so incredibly detailed and filled with minutiae that it took me two months and several breaks to get through the 200+ pages. Some of it was interesting, but there was just so much information I didn't need to know or care about.

2. Hardware Hackers - Mid 70s - 1980. All about the Homebrew Computer Club and the development of early personal computers, focusing on the Altair 8800, TRS-80, development of BASIC, and Stephen Wozniak's creation of the Apple and Apple II Personal Computers. This section was definitely more lively than the first, but there is still nothing that couldn't have been summed up in a 4 or 5 page magazine article or a visit to Wikipedia.

3. Game Hackers - Late 70s - 1982. This section is largely about the development of the game company Sierra On-Line, although the first few chapters spend a lot of time discussing early game development. This section was the most interesting in the book, especially to gain some insight into the culture that existed in the gamin industry back in its development, but not as exciting as I thought it was going to be. Since the book was published in 1984, there is no mention of the incredibly popular King's Quest series that launched Sierra to the top of the industry.

The main underlying theme of this book is the "hacker ethic," characterized by open access to computers (no passwords), mistrust of authority, computers are beneficial to changing people's lives, and all information should be free. It is very heavily discussed throughout the book and it's implications on the industry and the people in it. If this were a thesis paper about the hacker ethic I would have given Mr. Levy an A+ for staying so on focus. Unfortunately, it's not a thesis paper. If you are purchasing this book for entertainment purposes, make sure you are REALLY interested in early hacker culture. I thought I was but the book was just too dry for me. Not to mention it was hard to keep up with the hundreds of people introduced in the book. On the plus side, it is exceptionally well-researched and hardly seems dated at all. Until I got to the last few chapters, I had no idea the book was over twenty years old.

Edit: 5/16/11 - Revising my rating on this product to reflect the material rather than my expectations. I still feel like it's too old to reflect what we now know about the "computer revolution" and can use some updating, and that the book needs to be edited more to remove parts of it that slow down the flow and do not contribute to the narrative.

4 people found this helpful

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Eugene N. Miya

Well, not quite heros in my book, but good friends

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on February 14, 2011

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Steven's book has become a social phenomena in its own right. One moment, I am reading this book in the 80s and the next I am on a porch having a nice quiet conservation with Rick Greenblatt ("An honor to meet you"). Following that I'm on the Steering Committee for the Conference started by Stewart Brand. Stewart deserves a lot of credit, but Steven (whom I've met but don't know quite as well, since I am into high end computing not microcomputing but with some experience on Xerox workstations {life changing}). I shared an office with Jack Dennis the year prior while Jack was on sabbatical in California (we were both tea drinkers in a sea of coffee drinkers). I had not realized that he was into model trains. So I give copies of this book to East Coast friends trying to understand Santa Clara Valley. So I have lived a lot of the periphery of this book.

The new edition has more chapter divisions from the first edition's three sections. Annually for the past 25+ years, several hundred geeks gather to continue the ideas in this book. The book has changed the world in subtle not well documented attempts: Cloud 9, Interval Research, Foo Camp, etc. The general non-computing public will never hear of these. Thousands of others in some know will lust for invitations to be "flies on the wall."

Important things Steven got right missed by others: while the Apollo 17 story is all well and good, Steven picked up on the contrast between Northern and Southern California. Why did Lee's Homebrew Computer Club "succeed" while the Southern California Computer Society (SCCS) fail? This was an important lesson (I grew up in So Cal and attended the anniversary of the founding of Homebrew (HCC). More engineers up North and fewer better marketeers up North. It's a lesson from aerospace bureaucracy. Even Markoff's What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry book (good in it's own right) missed the chance to elaborate on this. This is missed by every analysis of Silicon Valley. It's even missing on wikipedia. A lot of water has passed under the bridge and this edition has 2 additional afterwards by Steven. Brand also had a short documentary (30 min) made PBS.

Steven did miss 1..2 important points. Markoff has slightly more of the experimental drug culture. The one big subtopic local to the SF Bay area which was raised by the Conference of our same name are the small but significant percentage (typically cited at about 10% as a handle) of gay and Lesbian attendees working in the computer industry. They find political/jock-ular attempts to move the computer industry else where laughable for this reason (they would want me to note this). The culture of the MIT student selection process is also left out. Honor systems had a greater influence because of this.

Steven is not a programmer. He's a journalist. He's got colleagues whom other former roommates of mine married. He did not expect this story to have the legs it has. He gets things mostly right, so read some of the other books besides his and John: Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer (Second Edition) , Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date , Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet , Nerds 2.0.1 , The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal , Triumph of the Nerds , Triumph of the Nerds , and likely many, many other books and dissertations.

They are likely all flawed in some way or another. Bob Taylor thinks Mitch Waldthrop got history right in The Dream Machine. Some people equate Hackers (the book) to Kidder's The Soul of A New Machine . Kidder has 2..3 good points, but Data General and the MV/8000 are gone. Levy's book is head and shoulders Kidder's book.

I would hate to see some Intro to computing class force students to read this book. It's not for every one, it's flawed, it's geeky. But Levy's book contains little gems that many people outside computing will never understand about hacker culture.

5 people found this helpful

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Capn Jack

A book that lets people know what the term Hacker really means

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 3, 2022

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Starts with the early days when all you had was 8k of memory and you had to write most of your own programs in BASIC. The free flow of information was the by word until the money boys like Gates corrupted the system. I'm not a Gates Hater, even though a lot of his business tactics were heavy handed. He did force the industry into a form of standardization.

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Top reviews from other countries

Mole

This is where it started

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 9, 2011

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If you work within the field of computing and have an interest in how and why things have developed the way they have, then this book is one that you really should get. In this context, "Hacker" is not a perjorative term; it does not refer to the people that set out to maliciously damage systems, but rather to those that tried to understand how and why things work they way they do, by deconstructing them, and then trying to make them work more efficiently.

The author provides details of how many of the pioneers of modern computing honed their skills; the relationships between the various people and also tries to give an insight into their thinking. It's clear that in many cases, no-one was particularly driven to go down a particular route, they were just trying to see what they could do. It's equally clear that some of the development was as the result of external forces from people that probably knew little if anything about the potential of the coming computer revolution.

The book can seem a bit lengthy; the author has tried to highlight the activities a very large number of people that were active through the first few decades of the modern computing era. But it is a very worthwhile read.

2 people found this helpful

A. I. Mackenzie

Excellent computing history

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 28, 2016

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This is now a classic, I read it in the early nineties first and this is an updated version.
It follows various eras of computing the early pioneers in the fifties labs (Cambridge, Boston), the Homebrew era in Northern California and finally home games programming in the 80s. My favourite era is the homebrew one that led to Apple computers.
The writing is consistently entertaining and there's a lot of historical detail. I reread this on my kindle recently and enjoyed it the second time.

One person found this helpful

la Plume de ma Tante

An extraordinary account of the growth of the home computer.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on January 8, 2014

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If you thought the term 'Hackers' had anything to do with computers you were mis-informed - but they invented the entire industry, bootstrapping it from skills learned from people running the early mainframe computers while on the search for components for their giant train set. Amazingly detailed, Steven Levy has lived and worked among the generation of geeks who became the household names from Microsoft and Apple, the games houses and software companies that are now world wide big business. And with the development of the Raspberry Pi it might be starting all over again!!

Chris Smith

Entertaining and Informative

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on October 10, 2013

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This is a great book for anybody interested in computers, very interesting and eye opening content. I'm an IT consultant and programmer so this book was brilliant for me.

Boso

How Computers developed from the middle of the 20th century to what they are now

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on June 28, 2017

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Best non fiction story you will buy relating to computers.

One person found this helpful

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