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 that came out of a symbiotic relationship between the hackers and the machines. The Ethic consisted of allowing all information to be open and accessible in order to learn about how the world worked; using the already available knowledge to create more knowledge. '' running on a
PDP-1 Several chapters discuss the history of computer gaming, beginning with
Spacewar! in September 1961. This paved the way for major gaming companies such as
On-Line,
Broderbund, and
Sirius Software. Other highlights include: '''
Conway's Game of Life''', a
computer simulation written by
John Horton Conway which 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 storefront in
Menlo Park, California, to offer computer time and classes.
Every Man a God: In
Albuquerque, New Mexico,
Ed Roberts founded
Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems created the
Altair 8800, a computer kit that cost only $397.
The Homebrew Computer Club was founded by
Fred Moore and
Gordon French as a way for electronics hobbyists and hackers to get together and exchange information and talk about their projects. The first meeting took place on March 5, 1975 in Gordon's garage.
Tiny BASIC:
Altair BASIC was an
interpreter that translated instructions from the
BASIC programming language into assembly instructions that the Altair 8800 could understand. It was developed by
Bill Gates and
Paul Allen, the founders of
Microsoft, then styled "Micro-soft", specifically for the 8800 and it would fit in 4K of memory. In addition, Levy profiles important hacker figures, including
John Draper,
Bill Gates,
Richard Greenblatt, and
Steve Wozniak. ==Reception==