Hackers: The Heroes of the Computer Revolution Review by Taehan Lee

     I read Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. The book was a story about the birth of modern-day computers and the transition to modern-day PCs. It was a very interesting read that really humbled my previous understanding of computers.

One thing that was very interesting to me about the book was a thing called the Hacker Ethic. It was a term born in Tech Square in MIT, and it describes the working ethic that the computer hackers that lived there had while they worked with these huge computers. The moment they entered the room, they would forget about everything else. They would forget about doing well in school, sleeping, eating and all they did was just give 100% all the time to hacking a computer. It was very interesting. They would set up strange sleeping systems where they would stay awake and build programs on a computer for 3 days straight, then sleep like a baby for another few days straight. This kind of unconditional dedication to something like a computer was so interesting and humbling to me. I always thought I had tried hard at things, but this really humbled my understanding of what trying hard meant.

The book then begins to follow the Hacker Ethic through the development of computers, and how it slowly got drowned out by the growth of computer users. For example, one main component of the Hacker Ethic is the availability of ideas. If you had built a program, you were to leave it in the open for someone else to come and improve it. Everything was open, free and usable by anyone. However, as the bigger companies started to build people-friendly computers and get more focused on the monetization of programming, the hacker dream of open improvement between hackers began to disappear. This was just one of the many ways the Hacker Ethic changed throughout the development of computers.

I found this book very interesting. It was a little boring at some parts because of the technical content. However, all in all it was very interesting to hear about the politics, people and dreams that played into making what we know as a computer today. I would highly recommend this book to anyone with a specific interest in programming or computers. It was very humbling to see how hard computers were to use before modern times, and how far we have come in this digital world.