Hackers, Heroes of the Computer Revolution
By Steven Levy
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Doubleday. Levy describes the people, the machines, and the events that defined the Hacker culture and Ethics, from the early mainframe hackers at MIT to the self-made hardware and game hackers. The book saw an edition with a new afterword (entitled “Afterword: Ten Years After”) by the author in 1994. In 2010, a 25th anniversary edition with updated material was published by O’Reilly. Levy traces developments in the history of hacking, beginning with The Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT, whose members were among the first hackers. He discusses the Hacker Ethic, a set of concepts, beliefs, and morals from a symbiotic relationship between the hackers and the machines. The Ethic consisted of allowing all information to be open and accessible to learn about how the world worked, using the already available knowledge to create more knowledge.
Several chapters discuss the history of computer gaming, beginning with Spacewar! in September 1961. This paved the way for major gaming companies like On-Line, Broderbund, and Sirius Software. Conway’s Game of Life, a computer simulation by John Horton Conway, became Bill Gosper’s focus in 1970. Revolt in 2100: Lee Felsenstein and Jude Milhon founded Community Memory, an offshoot of Resource One based in Berkeley, California. Bob Albrecht and his computer-book publishing company Dymax also brought computing to the people by teaching young students to program. Albrecht formed People’s Computer Company, a Menlo Park, California storefront, to offer computer time and classes.
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Steven Levy
Steven Levy (born 1951) is an American journalist and Editor at Large for Wired who has written extensively for publications on computers, technology, cryptography, the internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.
Biography
He is the author of the 1984 book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, which chronicles the early days of the computer underground. Levy published eight books covering computer hacker culture, artificial intelligence, cryptography, and multi-year exposés of Apple, Google, and Facebook. His most recent book, Facebook: The Inside Story, recounts the history and rise of Facebook from three years of interviews with employees, including Chamath Palihapitiya, Sheryl Sandberg, and Mark Zuckerberg. In 1978, Steven Levy rediscovered Albert Einstein’s brain in the office of the pathologist who removed and preserved it.
1984, his book Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution was published. He described a “hacker ethic”, which became a guideline for understanding how computers have advanced into the machines we know and use today. He identified this hacker ethic as consisting of critical points such as that all information is free and that this information should be used to “change life for the better”. Levy was a contributing editor to Popular Computing and wrote a monthly column in the magazine, initially called “Telecomputing” and later named “Micro Journal” and “Computer Journal”, from April 1983 to the magazine’s closure in December 1985. Levy contributed to Stewart Brand’s Whole Earth Software Catalog, first published in 1984. Levy won the “Computer Press Association Award” for a report he co-wrote 1998 on the Year 2000 problem. Levy is a writer and Editor at Large for Wired. He was previously chief technology writer and a senior editor for Newsweek. Levy has published articles in Harper’s, Macworld, The New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, Premiere, and Rolling Stone.
In December 1986, Levy founded the Macworld Game Hall of Fame, which Macworld published annually until 2009. He is regarded as a prominent and respected critic of Apple Inc. In July 2004, Levy wrote a cover story for Newsweek (which also featured an interview with Apple CEO Steve Jobs), which unveiled the 4th generation of the iPod to the world before Apple had officially done so.
Steven Levy
