Is spreading the Hacker Ethic Worth Abandoning Some of it’s Ideals?

Walking across most college campuses today can yield one universal sight…Bulletin Boards full of information on new clubs, upcoming events, and job postings. If you happened to be in Berkley, CA in the 1970’s you might have noticed a new type of bulletin board, a computer terminal hooked up to a time sharing machine where one could use keywords to search for specific interests. This system called Community Memory developed in the 1970’s by Lee Felsenstein and others known as “Hardware Hackers” was the beginning of a brand new thought of thinking among hackers at the time. This new thinking, heavily influenced by the ideas of counterculture that ran throughout the Southern California area at the time, was the idea that computers could be used by everyone; that computers could be used to spread ideas and that the power of a computer could indeed be accessible to every person not just rich corporations or academics.

These new ides led to a new type of hacker, these “Hardware Hackers” in contrast to the hackers of MIT believed that the hacker ethic should spread far and wide, that every man should be able to play God over his own digital world and along the way everyone should freely flow information to each other to help the ethic spread as far and as wide as possible. The MIT “True Hackers” in contrast were happy to sit in their Ivory Tower Utopia with their money coming from the defense department and had no desire to spread their ethic…why should they when they have everything they ever wanted in their closed off elite system. The new Hardware Hackers while still upholding the hacker ethic by letting other prove themselves with their skill were much more welcoming to outsiders or “losers”. In fact the hardware that they were hacking was exactly for those “losers”! They hacked hardware that was smaller, cheaper, faster, and easier to use. Examples of this are the Altair 8800, the Sol 20, and the Apple II all mentioned in the book. All of these machines were affordable enough that a common person could save up to buy one. The Hardware Hackers wanted to have hardware that anyone could use to show the world the power and the draw to computers. They wanted everyone to be able to have a computer and they believed that everyone having a computer would drastically shape and change the world for the better.

Having all of these brand new “Personal Computers” did indeed spark a revolution where any family could and would buy one of these machines of the future. This did not come without a price though, as evidenced by Bill Gates “An Open Letter To Hobbyists” many people didn’t feel the same way about the open flow of information that the Hardware Hackers felt. They believed it was their right to have Altair BASIC software, and why not? They could easily improve upon the software and make it the best it could possibly be. Bill Gates was upset because he felt he was being ripped off and he was still not fully done with the software as there were still bugs in it. What Gates didn’t realize is that the hacker community as a whole would most likely be able to fix most of those bugs and more themselves showing the power of free and open exchange of information.

By the time of the West Coast Computer Faire many different companies were showcasing their new Personal Computers and each company was now starting to compete for business. With business competition comes financial competition and gone were the days of the open exchange of information even the Homebrew Club stared to disappear as people moved on to working for companies that wanted to make sure their software and hardware designs stayed a secret. This was a fundamental shift away from the Hacker Ethic, and while the Hardware Hackers did succeed in their mission to spread computers far and wide they failed to realize that they had sold their souls to the devil to do it. I am sure that the MIT “True Hackers” would have been appalled to see this happen. The open and free exchange of information is what makes computing not only fun but allows everyone involved to learn and thus advance the industry. A great example of this today is code golfing on websites like dwitter on this website people try to come up with javascript code snippets in 140 characters or less that produce interesting looking graphics. All of the code is freely exchanged and anyone can comment and improve upon designs allowing the best designs to prevail and everyone involved to learn. While the companies of the time certainly made lots of money off of their secret products, they most likely were not the best possible designs they could have come up with. Financial gain is one thing but we all need to work together for the good of the world to openly and freely exchange information to promote growth in the industry and have the biggest possible impact on the world!