Hacker ethic
Encyclopedia
Hacker ethic is the generic phrase which describes the moral values and philosophy that are standard in the hacker community. The early hacker culture and resulting philosophy originated at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
(MIT) in the 1950s and 1960s. The term hacker ethic is attributed to journalist Steven Levy
as described in his book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
, written in 1984. The guidelines of the hacker ethic make it easy to see how computers have evolved into the personal devices we know and rely upon today. The key points within this ethic are access, free information, and improvement to quality of life.
While some tenets of hacker ethic were described in other texts like Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by Theodor Nelson, Levy appears to have been the first to document and historicize both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy.
Levy explains that MIT housed an early IBM 704
computer inside the Electronic Accounting Machinery (EAM) room in 1959. This room became the staging grounds for early hackers as MIT students from the Tech Model Railroad Club
sneaked inside the EAM room after hours to attempt programming the 30-ton, 9 feet (2.7 m) computer.
The "boys" (the initial group was entirely male) defined a hack as a project undertaken or a product built not solely to fulfil some constructive goal, but also with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement. The term hack
arose from MIT lingo, as the word had long been used to describe college pranks that MIT students would regularly devise.
The Hacker Ethic was a "new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream". However, the elements of the Hacker Ethic were not openly debated and discussed, rather they were accepted and silently agreed upon.
Free and open source software
(FOSS) is the descendant of the hacker ethics that Levy described. The hackers who hold true to the hacker ethics—especially the Hands-On Imperative—are usually supporters of the free and open source software
movement. This is because free and open source software allows hackers to get access to the source code used to create the software, to allow it to be improved or reused in other projects. In effect, the free and open source software movements embody all of the hacker ethics. However, Levy's hacker ethic also has often been quoted out of context and misunderstood to refer to hacking as in breaking into computers
, and so many sources incorrectly imply that it is describing the ideals of white-hat hackers. What Levy is talking about, however, does not have anything particular to do with computer security.
In addition to those principles, Levy also described more specific hacker ethics and beliefs in chapter 2, The Hacker Ethic: The ethics he described in chapter 2 are:
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!: Levy is recounting hackers' abilities to learn and build upon pre-existing ideas and systems. He believes that access gives hackers the opportunity to take things apart, fix, or improve upon them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. Access aids the expansion of technology.
All information should be free: Linking directly with the principle of access, information needs to be free for hackers to fix, improve, and reinvent systems. A free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity. In the hacker viewpoint, any system could benefit from an easy flow of information, a concept known as transparency
in the social sciences. As Stallman
notes, "free" refers to unrestricted access; it does not refer to price.
Mistrust authority — promote decentralization: The best way to promote the free exchange of information is to have an open system that presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that he needs in his quest for knowledge, improvement, and time on-line. Hackers believe that bureaucracies
, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position: Inherent in the hacker ethic is a meritocratic
system where superficiality is disregarded in esteem of skill. Levy articulates that criteria such as age, sex, race, position, and qualification are deemed irrelevant within the hacker community. Hacker skill is the ultimate determinant of acceptance. Such a code within the hacker community fosters the advance of hacking and software development. In an example of the hacker ethic of equal opportunity, L. Peter Deutsch
, a twelve-year-old hacker, was accepted in the TX-0
community, though he was not recognized by non-hacker graduate students.
You can create art and beauty on a computer: Hackers deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allow programs to perform complicated tasks with few instructions. A program's code was considered to hold a beauty of its own, having been carefully composed and artfully arranged. Learning to create programs which used the least amount of space almost became a game between the early hackers.
Computers can change your life for the better: Hackers felt that computers had enriched their lives, given their lives focus, and made their lives adventurous. Hackers regarded computers as Aladdin's lamps that they could control. They believed that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then the Hacker Ethic might spread through society and computers would improve the world. The hacker succeeded in turning dreams of endless possibilities into realities. The hacker's primary object was to teach society that "the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one" (Levy 230:1984)
If the hack was particularly good, then the program might be posted on a board somewhere near one of the computers. Other programs that could be built upon it and improved it were saved to tapes and added to a drawer of programs, readily accessible to all the other hackers. At any time, a fellow hacker might reach into the drawer, pick out the program, and begin adding to it or "bumming" it to make it better. Bumming referred to the process of making the code more concise so that more can be done in fewer instructions, saving precious memory for further enhancements.
In the second generation of hackers, sharing was about sharing with the general public in addition to sharing with other hackers. A particular organization of hackers that was concerned with sharing computers with the general public was a group called Community Memory
. This group of hackers and idealists put computers in public places for anyone to use. The first community computer was placed outside of Leopold's Records in Berkeley, California
.
Another sharing of resources occurred when Bob Albrecht provided considerable resources for a non-profit organization called People's Computer Company
(PCC). PCC opened a computer center where anyone could use the computers there for fifty cents per hour.
This second generation practice of sharing contributed to the battles of free and open software. In fact, when Bill Gates
' version of BASIC
for the Altair was shared among the hacker community, Gates claimed to have lost a considerable sum of money because few users paid for the software. As a result, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists
. This letter was published by several computer magazines and newsletters, most notably that of the Homebrew Computer Club
where much of the sharing occurred.
Employing the Hands-On Imperative requires free access, open information, and the sharing of knowledge. To a true hacker, if the Hands-On Imperative is restricted, then the ends justify the means to make it unrestricted so that improvements can be made. When these principles are not present, hackers tend to work around them. For example, when the computers at MIT were protected either by physical locks or login programs, the hackers there systematically worked around them in order to have access to the machines. Hackers assumed a "wilful blindness" in the pursuit of perfection.
This behavior was not malicious in nature: the MIT hackers did not seek to harm the systems or their users (although occasional practical joke
s were played using the computer systems). This deeply contrasts with the modern, media-encouraged image of hackers
who crack secure systems in order to steal information or complete an act of cybervandalism.
where the Homebrew Computer Club
and the People's Computer Company
helped hackers network, collaborate, and share their work.
The concept of community and collaboration is still relevant today, although hackers are no longer limited to collaboration in geographic regions. Now collaboration takes place via the Internet. Eric S. Raymond
identifies and explains this conceptual shift in The Cathedral and the Bazaar
:
Raymond also notes that the success of Linux coincided with the wide availability of the World Wide Web
. The value of community is still in high practice and use today.
Levy also identified the "hardware hackers" (the "second generation", mostly centered in Silicon Valley
) and the "game hackers" (or the "third generation"). All three generations of hackers, according to Levy, embodied the principles of the hacker ethic. Some of Levy's "second-generation" hackers include:
Levy's "third generation" practitioners of hacker ethic include:
. In his essay titled "Is there a Hacker Ethic for 90s Hackers?" he makes the controversial claim that the "New Hacker Ethic" has continuously evolved out of the older one, though having undergone a radical shift. Still, while the nature of hacker activity has evolved due to the availability of new technologies (for example, the mainstreaming of the personal computer, or the social connectivity of the internet), parts of the hacker ethics—particularly those of access, sharing, and community—remain the same.
philosopher Pekka Himanen
promoted the hacker ethic in opposition to the Protestant work ethic
. In Himanen's opinion, the hacker ethic is more closely related to the virtue ethics
found in the writings of Plato
and of Aristotle
. Himanen explained these ideas in a book, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, with a prologue contributed by Linus Torvalds
and an epilogue by Manuel Castells
.
In this manifesto, the authors wrote about a hacker ethic centering around passion, hard work, creativity and joy in creating software. Both Himanen and Torvalds were inspired by the Sampo
in Finnish mythology
. The Sampo, described in the Kalevala
saga, was a magical artifact constructed by Ilmarinen, the blacksmith god, that brought good fortune to its holder; nobody knows exactly what it was supposed to be. The Sampo has been interpreted in many ways: a world pillar or world tree, a compass or astrolabe, a chest containing a treasure, a Byzantine
coin die, a decorated Vendel
period shield, a Christian relic, etc. Kalevala saga compiler Lönnrot interpreted it to be a "quern" or mill of some sort that made flour, salt, and gold out of thin air.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts. MIT has five schools and one college, containing a total of 32 academic departments, with a strong emphasis on scientific and technological education and research.Founded in 1861 in...
(MIT) in the 1950s and 1960s. The term hacker ethic is attributed to journalist Steven Levy
Steven Levy
Steven Levy is an American journalist who has written several books on computers, technology, cryptography, the Internet, cybersecurity, and privacy.-Career:...
as described in his book titled Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution is a book by Steven Levy about hacker culture. It was published in 1984 in Garden City, New York by Anchor Press/Doubleday...
, written in 1984. The guidelines of the hacker ethic make it easy to see how computers have evolved into the personal devices we know and rely upon today. The key points within this ethic are access, free information, and improvement to quality of life.
While some tenets of hacker ethic were described in other texts like Computer Lib/Dream Machines (1974) by Theodor Nelson, Levy appears to have been the first to document and historicize both the philosophy and the founders of the philosophy.
Levy explains that MIT housed an early IBM 704
IBM 704
The IBM 704, the first mass-produced computer with floating point arithmetic hardware, was introduced by IBM in 1954. The 704 was significantly improved over the IBM 701 in terms of architecture as well as implementations which were not compatible with its predecessor.Changes from the 701 included...
computer inside the Electronic Accounting Machinery (EAM) room in 1959. This room became the staging grounds for early hackers as MIT students from the Tech Model Railroad Club
Tech Model Railroad Club
The Tech Model Railroad Club is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and one of the most celebrated model railroad clubs in the world, because of its historic role as a wellspring of hacker culture...
sneaked inside the EAM room after hours to attempt programming the 30-ton, 9 feet (2.7 m) computer.
The "boys" (the initial group was entirely male) defined a hack as a project undertaken or a product built not solely to fulfil some constructive goal, but also with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement. The term hack
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness, or to commemorate popular culture and historical topics. The pranks are anonymously installed at night by hackers, usually, but not exclusively...
arose from MIT lingo, as the word had long been used to describe college pranks that MIT students would regularly devise.
The Hacker Ethic was a "new way of life, with a philosophy, an ethic and a dream". However, the elements of the Hacker Ethic were not openly debated and discussed, rather they were accepted and silently agreed upon.
Free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
(FOSS) is the descendant of the hacker ethics that Levy described. The hackers who hold true to the hacker ethics—especially the Hands-On Imperative—are usually supporters of the free and open source software
Free and open source software
Free and open-source software or free/libre/open-source software is software that is liberally licensed to grant users the right to use, study, change, and improve its design through the availability of its source code...
movement. This is because free and open source software allows hackers to get access to the source code used to create the software, to allow it to be improved or reused in other projects. In effect, the free and open source software movements embody all of the hacker ethics. However, Levy's hacker ethic also has often been quoted out of context and misunderstood to refer to hacking as in breaking into computers
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
, and so many sources incorrectly imply that it is describing the ideals of white-hat hackers. What Levy is talking about, however, does not have anything particular to do with computer security.
The hacker ethics
As Levy summarized in the preface of Hackers, the general tenets or principles of hacker ethic include:- Sharing
- Openness
- Decentralization
- Free access to computers
- World Improvement
In addition to those principles, Levy also described more specific hacker ethics and beliefs in chapter 2, The Hacker Ethic: The ethics he described in chapter 2 are:
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!: Levy is recounting hackers' abilities to learn and build upon pre-existing ideas and systems. He believes that access gives hackers the opportunity to take things apart, fix, or improve upon them and to learn and understand how they work. This gives them the knowledge to create new and even more interesting things. Access aids the expansion of technology.
All information should be free: Linking directly with the principle of access, information needs to be free for hackers to fix, improve, and reinvent systems. A free exchange of information allows for greater overall creativity. In the hacker viewpoint, any system could benefit from an easy flow of information, a concept known as transparency
Transparency (humanities)
Transparency, as used in science, engineering, business, the humanities and in a social context more generally, implies openness, communication, and accountability. Transparency is operating in such a way that it is easy for others to see what actions are performed...
in the social sciences. As Stallman
Richard Stallman
Richard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
notes, "free" refers to unrestricted access; it does not refer to price.
Mistrust authority — promote decentralization: The best way to promote the free exchange of information is to have an open system that presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that he needs in his quest for knowledge, improvement, and time on-line. Hackers believe that bureaucracies
Bureaucracy
A bureaucracy is an organization of non-elected officials of a governmental or organization who implement the rules, laws, and functions of their institution, and are occasionally characterized by officialism and red tape.-Weberian bureaucracy:...
, whether corporate, government, or university, are flawed systems.
Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position: Inherent in the hacker ethic is a meritocratic
Meritocracy
Meritocracy, in the first, most administrative sense, is a system of government or other administration wherein appointments and responsibilities are objectively assigned to individuals based upon their "merits", namely intelligence, credentials, and education, determined through evaluations or...
system where superficiality is disregarded in esteem of skill. Levy articulates that criteria such as age, sex, race, position, and qualification are deemed irrelevant within the hacker community. Hacker skill is the ultimate determinant of acceptance. Such a code within the hacker community fosters the advance of hacking and software development. In an example of the hacker ethic of equal opportunity, L. Peter Deutsch
L. Peter Deutsch
L Peter Deutsch or Peter Deutsch is the founder of Aladdin Enterprises and creator of Ghostscript, a free software PostScript and PDF interpreter....
, a twelve-year-old hacker, was accepted in the TX-0
TX-0
The TX-0, for Transistorized Experimental computer zero, but affectionately referred to as tixo , was an early fully transistorized computer and contained a then-huge 64K of 18-bit words of magnetic core memory. The TX-0 was built in 1955 and went online in 1956 and was used continually through the...
community, though he was not recognized by non-hacker graduate students.
You can create art and beauty on a computer: Hackers deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allow programs to perform complicated tasks with few instructions. A program's code was considered to hold a beauty of its own, having been carefully composed and artfully arranged. Learning to create programs which used the least amount of space almost became a game between the early hackers.
Computers can change your life for the better: Hackers felt that computers had enriched their lives, given their lives focus, and made their lives adventurous. Hackers regarded computers as Aladdin's lamps that they could control. They believed that everyone in society could benefit from experiencing such power and that if everyone could interact with computers in the way that hackers did, then the Hacker Ethic might spread through society and computers would improve the world. The hacker succeeded in turning dreams of endless possibilities into realities. The hacker's primary object was to teach society that "the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one" (Levy 230:1984)
Sharing
According to Levy's account, sharing was the norm and expected within the non-corporate hacker culture. The principle of sharing stemmed from the open atmosphere and informal access to resources at MIT. During the early days of computers and programming, the hackers at MIT would develop a program and share it with other computer users.If the hack was particularly good, then the program might be posted on a board somewhere near one of the computers. Other programs that could be built upon it and improved it were saved to tapes and added to a drawer of programs, readily accessible to all the other hackers. At any time, a fellow hacker might reach into the drawer, pick out the program, and begin adding to it or "bumming" it to make it better. Bumming referred to the process of making the code more concise so that more can be done in fewer instructions, saving precious memory for further enhancements.
In the second generation of hackers, sharing was about sharing with the general public in addition to sharing with other hackers. A particular organization of hackers that was concerned with sharing computers with the general public was a group called Community Memory
Community Memory
Community Memory was the first public computerized bulletin board system. Established in 1973 in Berkeley, California, it used an SDS 940 timesharing system in San Francisco connected via a 110 baud link to a teleprinter at a record store in Berkeley to let users enter and retrieve messages...
. This group of hackers and idealists put computers in public places for anyone to use. The first community computer was placed outside of Leopold's Records in Berkeley, California
Berkeley, California
Berkeley is a city on the east shore of the San Francisco Bay in Northern California, United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland and Emeryville. To the north is the city of Albany and the unincorporated community of Kensington...
.
Another sharing of resources occurred when Bob Albrecht provided considerable resources for a non-profit organization called People's Computer Company
People's Computer Company
People's Computer Company was an organization, a newsletter and, later, a quasiperiodical called the "dragonsmoke." PCC was founded and produced by Bob Albrecht & George Firedrake in Menlo Park, California in the early 1970s.The first newsletter announced itself with the following...
(PCC). PCC opened a computer center where anyone could use the computers there for fifty cents per hour.
This second generation practice of sharing contributed to the battles of free and open software. In fact, when Bill Gates
Bill Gates
William Henry "Bill" Gates III is an American business magnate, investor, philanthropist, and author. Gates is the former CEO and current chairman of Microsoft, the software company he founded with Paul Allen...
' version of BASIC
BASIC
BASIC is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages whose design philosophy emphasizes ease of use - the name is an acronym from Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code....
for the Altair was shared among the hacker community, Gates claimed to have lost a considerable sum of money because few users paid for the software. As a result, Gates wrote an Open Letter to Hobbyists
Open Letter to Hobbyists
The Open Letter to Hobbyists was an open letter written by Bill Gates, the co-founder of Microsoft, to early personal computer hobbyists, in which Gates expresses dismay at the rampant copyright infringement taking place in the hobbyist community, particularly with regard to his company's...
. This letter was published by several computer magazines and newsletters, most notably that of the Homebrew Computer Club
Homebrew Computer Club
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist users' group in Silicon Valley, which met from March 5, 1975 to December 1986...
where much of the sharing occurred.
Hands-On Imperative
Many of the principles and tenets of Hacker Ethic contribute to a common goal: the Hands-On Imperative. As Levy described in Chapter 2, "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 more interesting things."Employing the Hands-On Imperative requires free access, open information, and the sharing of knowledge. To a true hacker, if the Hands-On Imperative is restricted, then the ends justify the means to make it unrestricted so that improvements can be made. When these principles are not present, hackers tend to work around them. For example, when the computers at MIT were protected either by physical locks or login programs, the hackers there systematically worked around them in order to have access to the machines. Hackers assumed a "wilful blindness" in the pursuit of perfection.
This behavior was not malicious in nature: the MIT hackers did not seek to harm the systems or their users (although occasional practical joke
Practical joke
A practical joke is a mischievous trick played on someone, typically causing the victim to experience embarrassment, indignity, or discomfort. Practical jokes differ from confidence tricks in that the victim finds out, or is let in on the joke, rather than being fooled into handing over money or...
s were played using the computer systems). This deeply contrasts with the modern, media-encouraged image of hackers
Hacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
who crack secure systems in order to steal information or complete an act of cybervandalism.
Community and collaboration
Throughout writings about hackers and their work processes, a common value of community and collaboration is present. For example, in Levy's Hackers, each generation of hackers had geographically based communities where collaboration and sharing occurred. For the hackers at MIT, it was the labs where the computers were running. For the hardware hackers (second generation) and the game hackers (third generation) the geographic area was centered in Silicon ValleySilicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
where the Homebrew Computer Club
Homebrew Computer Club
The Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist users' group in Silicon Valley, which met from March 5, 1975 to December 1986...
and the People's Computer Company
People's Computer Company
People's Computer Company was an organization, a newsletter and, later, a quasiperiodical called the "dragonsmoke." PCC was founded and produced by Bob Albrecht & George Firedrake in Menlo Park, California in the early 1970s.The first newsletter announced itself with the following...
helped hackers network, collaborate, and share their work.
The concept of community and collaboration is still relevant today, although hackers are no longer limited to collaboration in geographic regions. Now collaboration takes place via the Internet. Eric S. Raymond
Eric S. Raymond
Eric Steven Raymond , often referred to as ESR, is an American computer programmer, author and open source software advocate. After the 1997 publication of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, Raymond was for a number of years frequently quoted as an unofficial spokesman for the open source movement...
identifies and explains this conceptual shift in The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar
The Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design...
:
Before cheap Internet, there were some geographically compact communities where the culture encouraged Weinberg's egoless programming, and a developer could easily attract a lot of skilled kibitzers and co-developers. Bell Labs, the MIT AI and LCS labs, UC Berkeley: these became the home of innovations that are legendary and still potent.
Raymond also notes that the success of Linux coincided with the wide availability of the World Wide Web
World Wide Web
The World Wide Web is a system of interlinked hypertext documents accessed via the Internet...
. The value of community is still in high practice and use today.
Levy's "true hackers"
Levy identifies several "true hackers" who significantly influenced the hacker ethic. Some well-known "true hackers" include:- John McCarthyJohn McCarthy (computer scientist)John McCarthy was an American computer scientist and cognitive scientist. He coined the term "artificial intelligence" , invented the Lisp programming language and was highly influential in the early development of AI.McCarthy also influenced other areas of computing such as time sharing systems...
: Co-founder of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab and Stanford AI Laboratory - Bill GosperBill GosperRalph William Gosper, Jr. , known as Bill Gosper, is an American mathematician and programmer from Pennsauken Township, New Jersey...
: Mathematician and hacker - Richard GreenblattRichard Greenblatt (programmer)Richard D. Greenblatt is an American computer programmer. Along with Bill Gosper, he may be considered to have founded the hacker community, and holds a place of distinction in the Lisp and the MIT AI Lab communities.-Childhood:...
: Programmer and early designer of LISP machinesLisp machineLisp machines were general-purpose computers designed to efficiently run Lisp as their main software language. In a sense, they were the first commercial single-user workstations... - Richard StallmanRichard StallmanRichard Matthew Stallman , often shortened to rms,"'Richard Stallman' is just my mundane name; you can call me 'rms'"|last= Stallman|first= Richard|date= N.D.|work=Richard Stallman's homepage...
: Programmer and political activist who is well known for GNUGNUGNU is a Unix-like computer operating system developed by the GNU project, ultimately aiming to be a "complete Unix-compatible software system"...
, EmacsEmacsEmacs is a class of text editors, usually characterized by their extensibility. GNU Emacs has over 1,000 commands. It also allows the user to combine these commands into macros to automate work.Development began in the mid-1970s and continues actively...
and the Free Software MovementFree software movementThe free software movement is a social and political movement with the goal of ensuring software users' four basic freedoms: the freedom to run their software, to study and change their software, and to redistribute copies with or without changes. The alternative terms "software libre", "open...
Levy also identified the "hardware hackers" (the "second generation", mostly centered in Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley is a term which refers to the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area in Northern California in the United States. The region is home to many of the world's largest technology corporations...
) and the "game hackers" (or the "third generation"). All three generations of hackers, according to Levy, embodied the principles of the hacker ethic. Some of Levy's "second-generation" hackers include:
- Steve WozniakSteve WozniakStephen Gary "Woz" Wozniak is an American computer engineer and programmer who founded Apple Computer, Co. with Steve Jobs and Ronald Wayne...
: One of the founders of Apple ComputerApple ComputerApple Inc. is an American multinational corporation that designs and markets consumer electronics, computer software, and personal computers. The company's best-known hardware products include the Macintosh line of computers, the iPod, the iPhone and the iPad... - Bob Marsh: A designer of the Sol-20 computer
- Fred MooreFred Moore (activist)Fred Moore was a political activist who was central to the early history of the personal computer. He was an active member of the People's Computer Company and one of the founders of the Homebrew Computer Club, urging its members to "bring back more than you take."Moore is prominently featured in...
: Activist and founder of the Homebrew Computer ClubHomebrew Computer ClubThe Homebrew Computer Club was an early computer hobbyist users' group in Silicon Valley, which met from March 5, 1975 to December 1986... - Steve Dompier: Homebrew Computer Club member and hacker who worked with the early Altair 8800Altair 8800The MITS Altair 8800 was a microcomputer design from 1975 based on the Intel 8080 CPU and sold by mail order through advertisements in Popular Electronics, Radio-Electronics and other hobbyist magazines. The designers hoped to sell only a few hundred build-it-yourself kits to hobbyists, and were...
- Lee FelsensteinLee FelsensteinLee Felsenstein is an American computer engineer who played a central role in the development of the personal computer...
: A hardware hacker and co-founder of Community MemoryCommunity MemoryCommunity Memory was the first public computerized bulletin board system. Established in 1973 in Berkeley, California, it used an SDS 940 timesharing system in San Francisco connected via a 110 baud link to a teleprinter at a record store in Berkeley to let users enter and retrieve messages...
and Homebrew Computer Club; a designer of the Sol-20 computer - John DraperJohn DraperJohn Thomas Draper , also known as Captain Crunch, Crunch or Crunchman , is an American computer programmer and former phone phreak. He is a legendary figure within the computer programming world.- Background :Draper is the son of a U.S...
: A legendary figure in the computer programming world. He wrote EasyWriterEasyWriterEasyWriter was a word processor first written for the Apple II series computer in 1979, the first word processor for that platform. It was written by John Draper's Cap'n Software, which also produced a version of Forth, which EasyWriter was developed in....
, the first word processor.
Levy's "third generation" practitioners of hacker ethic include:
- John Harris: One of the first programmers hired at On-Line Systems (which later became Sierra EntertainmentSierra EntertainmentSierra Entertainment Inc. was an American video-game developer and publisher founded in 1979 as On-Line Systems by Ken and Roberta Williams...
) - Ken WilliamsKen Williams (gaming)Ken Williams is an American game programmer and co-founded On-Line Systems, which later became Sierra On-Line, together with his wife Roberta Williams. Roberta and Ken married at the age of 19 and have two children...
: Along with wife RobertaRoberta WilliamsRoberta Williams is an American video game designer. She is most famous for her pioneering work in graphical adventure games, particularly the King's Quest series.-Career:...
, founded On-Line Systems after working at IBM
Comparison to "cracker" ethics
Steven Mizrach, who identifies himself with CyberAnthropologist studies, compared Levy's "Old Hacker Ethic" with the "New Hacker Ethic" prevalent in the computer security hacking communityHacker (computer security)
In computer security and everyday language, a hacker is someone who breaks into computers and computer networks. Hackers may be motivated by a multitude of reasons, including profit, protest, or because of the challenge...
. In his essay titled "Is there a Hacker Ethic for 90s Hackers?" he makes the controversial claim that the "New Hacker Ethic" has continuously evolved out of the older one, though having undergone a radical shift. Still, while the nature of hacker activity has evolved due to the availability of new technologies (for example, the mainstreaming of the personal computer, or the social connectivity of the internet), parts of the hacker ethics—particularly those of access, sharing, and community—remain the same.
Other descriptions
In 2001, FinnishFinland
Finland , officially the Republic of Finland, is a Nordic country situated in the Fennoscandian region of Northern Europe. It is bordered by Sweden in the west, Norway in the north and Russia in the east, while Estonia lies to its south across the Gulf of Finland.Around 5.4 million people reside...
philosopher Pekka Himanen
Pekka Himanen
-Biography:Pekka Himanen defines himself as a philosopher and a public intellectual. He studied philosophy at the University of Helsinki. In 1994, with his thesis on the philosophy of religion, The challenge of Bertrand Russell, he received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the same university, thus...
promoted the hacker ethic in opposition to the Protestant work ethic
Protestant work ethic
The Protestant work ethic is a concept in sociology, economics and history, attributable to the work of Max Weber...
. In Himanen's opinion, the hacker ethic is more closely related to the virtue ethics
Virtue ethics
Virtue ethics describes the character of a moral agent as a driving force for ethical behavior, rather than rules , consequentialism , or social context .The difference between these four approaches to morality tends to lie more in the way moral dilemmas are...
found in the writings of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
and of Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
. Himanen explained these ideas in a book, The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age, with a prologue contributed by Linus Torvalds
Linus Torvalds
Linus Benedict Torvalds is a Finnish software engineer and hacker, best known for having initiated the development of the open source Linux kernel. He later became the chief architect of the Linux kernel, and now acts as the project's coordinator...
and an epilogue by Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells
Manuel Castells is a sociologist especially associated with information society and communication research....
.
In this manifesto, the authors wrote about a hacker ethic centering around passion, hard work, creativity and joy in creating software. Both Himanen and Torvalds were inspired by the Sampo
Sampo
In Finnish mythology, the Sampo or Sammas was a magical artifact of indeterminate type constructed by Ilmarinen that brought good fortune to its holder...
in Finnish mythology
Finnish mythology
Finnish mythology is the mythology that went with Finnish paganism which was practised by the Finnish people prior to Christianisation. It has many features shared with fellow Finnic Estonian mythology and its non-Finnic neighbours, the Balts and the Scandinavians...
. The Sampo, described in the Kalevala
Kalevala
The Kalevala is a 19th century work of epic poetry compiled by Elias Lönnrot from Finnish and Karelian oral folklore and mythology.It is regarded as the national epic of Finland and is one of the most significant works of Finnish literature...
saga, was a magical artifact constructed by Ilmarinen, the blacksmith god, that brought good fortune to its holder; nobody knows exactly what it was supposed to be. The Sampo has been interpreted in many ways: a world pillar or world tree, a compass or astrolabe, a chest containing a treasure, a Byzantine
Byzantine
Byzantine usually refers to the Roman Empire during the Middle Ages.Byzantine may also refer to:* A citizen of the Byzantine Empire, or native Greek during the Middle Ages...
coin die, a decorated Vendel
Vendel
Vendel is a parish in the Swedish province of Uppland.The village overlooks a long inland stretch of water, Vendelsjön, near which the Vendel river has its confluence with the river Fyris. The church was established in 1310...
period shield, a Christian relic, etc. Kalevala saga compiler Lönnrot interpreted it to be a "quern" or mill of some sort that made flour, salt, and gold out of thin air.
See also
- Hacks at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyHacks at the Massachusetts Institute of TechnologyHacks at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are practical jokes and pranks meant to prominently demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness, or to commemorate popular culture and historical topics. The pranks are anonymously installed at night by hackers, usually, but not exclusively...
- Hacker (programmer subculture)
- Hacker (term)
- Tech Model Railroad ClubTech Model Railroad ClubThe Tech Model Railroad Club is a student organization at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology , and one of the most celebrated model railroad clubs in the world, because of its historic role as a wellspring of hacker culture...
- The Cathedral and the BazaarThe Cathedral and the BazaarThe Cathedral and the Bazaar is an essay by Eric S. Raymond on software engineering methods, based on his observations of the Linux kernel development process and his experiences managing an open source project, fetchmail. It examines the struggle between top-down and bottom-up design...
External links
- Enid Gabriella Coleman, an anthropologist at NYU, works on hackers and has written extensively on the hacker ethic and culture http://steinhardt.nyu.edu/faculty_bios/view/Gabriella_Coleman http://ant.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/8/3/255
- Tom Chance's essay on The Hacker Ethic and Meaningful Work
- Hacker ethic from the Jargon fileJargon FileThe Jargon File is a glossary of computer programmer slang. The original Jargon File was a collection of terms from technical cultures such as the MIT AI Lab, the Stanford AI Lab and others of the old ARPANET AI/LISP/PDP-10 communities, including Bolt, Beranek and Newman, Carnegie Mellon...
- Directory of free software
- ITERATIVE DISCOURSE AND THE FORMATION OF NEW SUBCULTURES by Steve Mizrach describes the hacker terminology, including the term cracker.
- Richard Stallman's Personal Website
- Is there a Hacker Ethic for 90s Hackers? by Steven Mizrach
- The Hacker's Ethics by the Cyberpunk Project