Steven Levy

“ The last thing you need is a bureaucracy. Bureaucracies, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems, dangerous in that they cannot accommodate the exploratory impulse of true hackers. Bureaucrats hide behind arbitrary rules (as opposed to the logical algorithms by which machines and computer programs operate) : they invoke those rules to consolidate power, and perceive the constructive impulse of hackers as a threat. ”

“ Once you fix a behavioral problem [a computer or program] has, it's fixed forever, and it is exactly an image of what you meant."
LIKE ALADDIN'S LAMP, YOU COULD GET IT TO DO YOUR BIDDING. 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. ”

“ With a fervor like that of young hot-rodders fixated on souping up engines, they came to take their almost unique surroundings for granted, Even as the elements of a culture were forming, as legends began to accrue, as their mastery of programming started to surpass any previous recorded levels of skill, the dozen or so hackers were reluctant to acknowledge that their tiny society, on intimate terms with the TX-0, had been slowly and implicitly piecing together a body of concepts, beliefs, and mores. ”

“ Sometimes program bumming became competitive, a macho contest to prove oneself so much in command of the system that one could recognize elegant shortcuts to shave off an instruction or two, or, better yet, rethink the whole problem and devise a new algorithm which would save a whole block of instructions. (An algorithm is a specific procedure which one can apply to solve a complex computer problem; it is sort of a mathematical skeleton key.) ”

“ Everyone could gain something by the use of thinking computers in an intellectually automated world. And wouldn't everyone benefit even more by approaching the world with the same inquisitive intensity, skepticism toward bureaucracy, openness to creativity, unselfishness in sharing accomplishments, urge to make improvements, and desire to build as those who followed the Hacker Ethic? ”

“ McCarthy had started a mammoth program on the IBM 704—the Hulking Giant—that would give it the extraordinary ability to play chess. To critics of the budding field of Artificial Intelligence, this was just one example of the boneheaded optimism of people like John McCarthy. But McCarthy had a certain vision of what computers could do, and playing chess was only the beginning.
All fascinating stuff, but not the vision that was driving Kotok and Samson and the others. ”

“ Music had always been made by directly creating vibrations that were sound. What happened in Samson's program was that a load of numbers, bits of information fed into a computer, comprised a code in which the music resided. You could spend hours staring at the code, and not be able to divine where the music was. It only became music while millions of blindingly brief exchanges of data were taking place in the accumulator sitting in one of the metal, wire, and silicon racks that comprised the TX-0. ”

“ If you had misplaced as much as one letter in one instruction, the program would crash, and you would have to start the whole process over again. It went hand in hand with the stifling proliferation of goddamn RULES that permeated the atmosphere of the computation center. Most of the rules were designed to keep crazy young computer fans like Samson and Kotok and Saunders physically distant from the machine itself. The most rigid rule of all was that no one should be able to actually touch or tamper with the machine itself. ”

“ It was a casual, unthinking step into a science-fiction future, but that was typical of the way that an odd subculture was pulling itself up by its bootstraps and growing to underground prominence—to become a culture that would be the impolite, unsanctioned soul of computerdom. ”

“ Maybe the program was figuring out some new algorithm with which to conquer chess.
At other universities, professors were making public proclamations that computers would never be able to beat a human being in chess. Hackers knew better. They would be the ones who would guide computers to greater heights than anyone expected. And the hackers, by fruitful, meaningful association with the computer, would be foremost among the beneficiaries. ”

“ How could that professor—how could, in fact, anyone who hadn't been immersed in this uncharted man-machine universe—understand how Wagner and his fellow hackers were routinely using the computer to simulate, according to Wagner, "strange situations which one could scarcely envision otherwise"? The professor would learn in time, as would everyone, that the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one. ”

“ The epitome of the bureaucratic world was to be found at a very large company called International Business Machines—IBM. The reason its computers were batch-processed Hulking Giants was only partially because of vacuum tube technology, The real reason was that IBM was a clumsy, hulking company which did not understand the hacking impulse. If IBM had its way (so the TMRC hackers thought) , the world would be batch-processed, laid out on those annoying little punch cards, and only the most privileged of priests would be permitted to actually interact with the computer. ”

“ Kotok's role in bringing the chess program to life was indicative of what was to become the hacker role in Artificial Intelligence: a Heavy Head like McCarthy or like his colleague Marvin Minsky would begin a project or wonder aloud whether something might be possible, and the hackers, if it interested them, would set about doing it.
The chess program had been started using FORTRAN, one of the early computer languages. Computer languages look more like English than assembly language, are easier to write with, and do more things with fewer instructions ”

“ Because of the limited memory space of the TX-0 (a handicap that extended to all computers of that era) , hackers came to deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allowed programs to do complicated tasks with very few instructions. The shorter a program was, the more space you had left for other programs, and the faster a program ran. Sometimes when you didn't need speed or space much, and you weren't thinking about art and beauty, you'd hack together an ugly program, attacking the problem with "brute force" methods. ”

“ McCarthy in 1959 was turning his interest from chess to a new way of talking to the computer, the whole new "language" called LISP. Alan Kotok and his friends were more than eager to take over the chess project. Working on the batch-processed IBM, they embarked on the gargantuan project of teaching the 704, and later the 709, and even after that its replacement the 7090, how to play the game of kings. Eventually Kotok's group became the largest users of computer time in the entire MIT computation center. ”

“ And you could compare that to the extremely informal atmosphere around the TX-0, where grungy clothes were the norm and almost anyone could wander in.
Now, IBM had done and would continue to do many things to advance computing. By its sheer size and mighty influence, it had made computers a permanent part of life in America. To many people, the words IBM and computer were virtually synonymous. IBM's machines were reliable workhorses, worthy of the trust that businessmen and scientists invested in them. ”

“ Likewise, people who trotted in with seemingly impressive credentials were not taken seriously until they proved themselves at the console of a computer. This meritocratic trait was not necessarily rooted in the inherent goodness of hacker hearts—it was mainly that hackers cared less about someone's superficial characteristics than they did about his potential to advance the general state of hacking, to create new programs to admire, to talk about that new feature in the system.
YOU CAN CREATE ART AND BEAUTY ON A COMPUTER. Samson's music program was an example. ”

“ The first thing Dennis worked on was an assembler. This was something that translated assembly language—which used three- letter symbolic abbreviations that represented instructions to the machine—into machine language, which consisted of the binary numbers 0 and 1. The TX-0 had a rather limited assembly language: since its design allowed only two bits of each eighteen-bit word to be used for instructions to the computer, only four instructions could be used (each possible two-bit variation—00, 0 1, 10, and 11—represented an instruction) . ”

“ Sometime after the lecture came Freshman Midway. All the campus organizations—special-interest groups, fraternities, and such— set up booths in a large gymnasium to try to recruit new members. The group that snagged Peter was the Tech Model Railroad Club. Its members, bright-eyed and crew-cutted upperclassmen who spoke with the spasmodic cadences of people who want words out of the way in a hurry, boasted a spectacular display of HO gauge trains they had in a permanent clubroom in Building 20. Peter Samson had long been fascinated by trains, especially subways. ”

“ The core members hung out at the club for hours; constantly improving The System, arguing about what could be done next, developing a jargon of their own that seemed incomprehensible to outsiders who might chance on these teen-aged fanatics, with their checked short-sleeve shirts, pencils in their pockets, chino pants, and, always, a bottle of Coca-Cola by their side. ”

“ Still, the TX-0 was the center of his college career, and he shared the common hacker experience of seeing his grades suffer from missed classes. It didn't bother him much, because he knew that his real education was occurring in Room 240 of Building 26, behind the Tixo console. Years later he would describe himself and the others as "an elite group. Other people were off studying, spending their days up on four-floor buildings making obnoxious vapors or off in the physics lab throwing particles at things or whatever it is they do. ”

“ This antibureaucratic bent coincided neatly with the personalities of many of the hackers, who since childhood had grown accustomed to building science projects while the rest of their classmates were banging their heads together and learning social skills on the field of sport. These young adults who were once outcasts found the computer a fantastic equalizer, experiencing a feeling, according to Peter Samson, "like you opened the door and walked through this grand new universe . ”

“ When you were working on a machine like the TX-0, which came with almost no software, everyone would furiously write systems programs to make programming easier—Tools to Make Tools, kept in the drawer by the console for easy access by anyone using the machine. ”

“ Rarely would a hacker try to impose a view of the myriad advantages of the computer way of knowledge to an outsider. Yet this premise dominated the everyday behavior of the TX-0 hackers, as well as the generations of hackers that came after them. ”

“ There was no one moment when it started to dawn on the TX-0 hackers that by devoting their technical abilities to computing with a devotion rarely seen outside of monasteries they were the vanguard of a daring symbiosis between man and machine. ”

“ Even though one might self-deprecatingly say he was "hacking away at The System" (much as an axe-wielder hacks at logs) , the artistry with which one hacked was recognized to be considerable.
The most productive people working on Signals and Power called themselves "hackers" with great pride. Within the confines of the clubroom in Building 20, and of the "Tool Room" (where some study and many techno bull sessions took place) , they had unilaterally endowed themselves with the heroic attributes of Icelandic legend. ”

“ To hackers like Bob Saunders—balding, plump, and merry disciple of the TX-0, president of TMRC's S&P group, student of systems— it was a perfect existence. Saunders had grown up in the suburbs of Chicago, and for as long as he could remember the workings of electricity and telephone circuitry had fascinated him. ”

“ Lee Felsenstein Former "military editor" of Berkeley Barb, and hero of an imaginary science-fiction novel, he designed computers with "junkyard" approach and was central figure in Bay Area hardware hacking in the seventies.
Ed Fredkin Gentle founder of Information International, thought himself world's greates programmer until he met Stew Nelson. Father figure to hackers.
Gordon French Silver-haired hardware hacker whose garage held not cars but his homebrewed Chicken Hawk comptuer, then held the first Homebrew Computer Club meeting. ”

“ Still, even in the days of the TX-0, the planks of the platform were in place. The Hacker Ethic:
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. ”

“ There was definitely an artistic impulse residing in those who could utilize this genius-from-Mars techniques black-magic, visionary quality which enabled them to discard the stale outlook of the best minds on earth and come up with a totally unexpected new algorithm. ”

“ A program called a compiler does this, and the compiler takes up time to do its job, as well as occupying valuable space within the computer. In effect, using a computer language puts you an extra step away from direct contact with the computer, and hackers generally preferred assembly or, as they called it, "machine" language to less elegant, "higher-level" languages like FORTRAN.
Kotok, though, recognized that because of the huge amounts of numbers that would have to be crunched in a chess program, part of the program would have to be done in FORTRAN, and part in assembly. ”