Steven Levy: Hacker Ethics

Being a hacker has evolved through the centuries. Recent past indicates a hacker as a person that gets into the system of a company or individual in order to obtain information, or to damage the computer. However, in Steven Levy’s text, he indicates a hacker as someone who is trying to push the limits farther, as being a visionary or adventurer. What Steven tried to accomplish was to bring forward the contributions that these innovators laid the foundation for. He was not trying to tell the story of the richest or the most popular, but the story of those that spent countless hours in intimacy with the machine itself, the real story behind the computer revolution. Steven Levy organizes the book as a progression from the earliest start of computers …show more content…
However, when MIT received another computer, the TX-0, their access and time with the new machine increased substantially. This is when the group truly became obsessed with working with computers; they would stake out the computer and wait for someone to miss their time slot so they could use the machine. The programs that came from this were brand new ideas, especially one program that could do a Bach symphony from the tones that the computer emitted through audio. But with power must come responsibility, this is when the hacker ethics came into play. Hacker Ethic state six points: access to computers, all information should be free, mistrust authority, hackers should be judged by their hacking, you can create art and beauty on a computer and computers can change your life for the better. These ethics helped control what the hackers did and stood for, they did not like that the computers were regulated and that access to them should be unlimited and have total control. Another development was the first game to be run on a computer, it was a very basic …show more content…
Through the analyzation of these stories, we see that the men behind the innovation were traversing where no one had gone before. These men were accepting an adventure that promised no end, only an open frontier that lay before them. Hackers paved the way for advances through their own style and techniques. They were not mangy or unprofessional; however they were visionaries, risk-takers who tried to improve the world. Levy was not trying to tell you about the most famous or rich, he was trying to convey their story, their intimate connection to the machine itself, the real story of the computer