,hackers1 ,heroes of the ,computer ,revolution1 by ,steven ,levy 7,c7#aihd by ,steven ,levy ,chapters #a and #b of ,hackers1 ,heroes of the ,computer ,revolution by ,steven ,levy ,who's ,who ,the ,wizards and their ,machines ,bob ,albrecht ,found of ,people's ,computer ,company who took visceral pleasure in exposing youngsters to computers4 ,altair #hhjj ,the pioneering microcomputer that galvanized hardware hackers4 ,building this kit made you learn hacking4 ,then you tried to figure out what to ,,do with it4 ,apple ,,ii ,steve ,wozniak's friendly1 flaky1 good-looking computer1 wildly successful and the spark and soul of a thriving industry4 ,atari #hjj ,this home computer gave great graphics to game hackers like ,john ,harris1 though the company that made it was loath to tell you how it worked4 ,bob and ,carolyn ,box ,world-record-holding gold prospectors turned software stars1 working for ,sierra ,on-,line4 ,doug ,carlston ,corporate lawyer who chucked it all to form the ,broderbund software company4 ,bob ,davis ,left job in liquor store to become best-selling author of ,sierra ,on-,line computer game ,ulysses and the ,golden ,fleece4 ,success was his downfall4 ,peter ,deutsch ,bad in sports1 brilliant at math1 ,peter was still in short pants when he stubled on the ,,tx-#j at ,,mit--and hacked it along with the masters4 ,steve ,dompier ,homebrew member who first made the ,altair sing1 and later wrote the ,targe game on the ,sol which entranced ,tom ,snyder4 ,john ,draper ,the notorious ,captain ,crunch who fearlessly explored the phone systems1 got jailed1 hacked microprocessors4 ,cigarettes made his violent4 ,mark ,duchaineau ,the young ,dungeonmaster who copy-protected ,on-,lines disks at his whim4 ,chris ,esponosa ,fourteen-year-old follower of ,steve ,wozniak and early ,apple employee4 ,lee ,felsenstein ,former military editor of ,berkeley ,barb1 and hero of an imaginary science-fiction novel1 he designed computers with junkyard approach and was central figure in ,bay ,area hardware hacking in the seventies4 ,ed ,fredkin ,gentle founder of ,information ,international1 thought himself world's greates programmer until he met ,stew ,nelson4 ,father figure to hackers4 ,gordon ,french ,silver-haired hardware hacker whose garage held not cars but his homebrewed ,chicken ,hawk comptuer1 then held the first ,homebrew ,computer ,club meeting4 ,richard ,garriott ,astronaut's son who1 as ,lord ,british1 created ,ultima world on computer disks4 ,bill ,gates ,cocky wizard1 ,harvard dropout who wrote ,altair ,,basic1 and complained when hackers copied it4 ,bill ,gosper ,horwitz of computer keyboards1 master math and ,,life hacker at ,,mit ,,ai lab1 guru of the ,hacker ,ethic and student of ,chinese restaurant menus4 ,richard ,greenblatt ,single-minded1 unkempt1 prolific1 and canonical ,,mit hacker who went into night phase so often that he zorched his academic career4 ,the hacker's hacker4 ,john ,harris ,the young ,atari #hjj game hacker who became ,sierra ,on-,line's star programmer1 but yearned for female companionship4 ,,ibm-,,pc ,,ibm's entry into the personal computer market which amazingly included a bit of the ,hacker ,ethic1 and took over4 ,h4,e4 as open architecture4 ,,ibm #gjd ,,ibm was ,the ,enemy1 and this was its machine1 the ,hulking ,giant computer in ,,mit's ,building #bf4 ,later modified into the ,,ibm #gji1 then the ,,ibm #gjij4 ,batch-processed and intolerable4 ,jerry ,jewell ,vietnam vet turned programmer who founded ,sirius ,software4 ,steven ,jobs ,visionary1 beaded1 non-hacking youngster who took ,wozniak's ,apple ,,ii 1 made a lot of deals1 and formed a company that would make a billion dollars4 ,tom ,knight ,at sixteen1 an ,,mit hacker who would name the ,incompatible ,time-sharing ,system4 ,later a ,greenblatt nemesis over the ,,lisp machine schism4 ,alan ,kotok ,the chubby ,,mit student from ,jersey who worked under the rail layout at ,,tmrc1 learned the phone system at ,western ,electric1 and became a legendary ,,tx-#j and ,,pdp-#a hacker4 ,effrem ,lipkin ,hacker-activist from ,new ,york who loved machines but hated their uses4 ,co-,founded ,community ,memory2 friend of ,felsenstein4 ,,lisp ,machine ,the ultimate hacker computer1 invented mosly by ,greenblatt and subject of a bitter dispute at ,,mit4 ,uncle ,john ,mc,carthy ,absent-minded but brilliant ,,mit later ,stanford professor who helped pioneer computer chess1 artificial intelligence1 ,,lisp4 ,bob ,marsh ,berkeley-ite and ,homebrewer who shared garage with ,felsenstein and founded ,processor ,technology1 which made the ,sol computer4 ,roger ,melen ,homebrewer who co-founded ,cromemco company to make circuit boards for ,altair4 ,his ,dazzler played ,,life programs on his kitchen table4 ,louis ,merton ,pseudonym for the ,,ai chess hacker whose tendency to go catatonic brought the hacker community together4 ,jude ,milhon ,met ,lee ,felsenstein through a classified ad in the ,berkeley ,barb1 and became more than a friend-- a member of the ,community ,memory collective4 ,marvin ,minsky ,playful and brilliant ,,mit prof who headed the ,,ai lave and allowed the hackers to run free4 ,fred ,moore ,vagabond pacifist who hated money1 loved technology1 and co-founded ,homebrew ,club4 ,stewart ,nelson ,buck-toothed1 diminutive1 but fiery ,,ai lab hacker who connected the ,,pdp-#a comptuer to hack the phone system4 ,later co-founded the ,systems ,concepts company4 ,ted ,nelson ,self-described innovator and noted curmudgeon who self-published the influential ,computer ,lib book4 ,russel ,noftsker ,harried administrator of ,,mit ,,ai lab in the late sixties2 later president of ,symbolics company4 ,adam ,osborne ,bangkok-born publisher-turned-computer-manufacturer who considered himself a philsopher4 ,founded ,osborne ,computer ,company to make adequate machines4 ,,pdp-#a ,digital ,equipment's first minicomputer1 and in #aifa an interactive godsend to the ,,mit hackers and a slap in the face to ,,ibm fascism4 ,,pdp-#f ,designed in part by ,kotok1 this mainframe computer was cornerstone of ,,ai lab1 with its gorgeious instruction set and sixteen sexy registers4 ,tom ,pittman ,the religious ,homebrew hacker who lost his wife but kept the faith with his ,tiny ,basic4 ,ed ,roberts ,enigmatic founder of ,,mits company who shook the world with his ,altair computer4 ,he wanted to help people build mental pyramids4 ,steve ,slug ,russell ,mc,carthy's coolie1 who hacked the ,spacewar program1 first videogame1 on the ,,pdp-#a4 ,never made a dime from it4 ,peter ,samson ,,mit hacker1 one of the first1 who loved systems1 trains1 ,,tx-#j1 music1 parliamentary procedure1 pranks1 and hacking4 ,bob ,saunders ,jolly1 balding ,,tmrc hacker who married early1 hacked till late at night eating lemon gunkies1 and mastered the ,,cbs ,strategy on ,spacewar4 ,warren ,schwader ,big blond hacker from rural ,wisconsin who went from the assembly line to software stardom but couldn't reconcile the shift with his devotion to ,jehovah's ,witnesses4 ,david ,silver ,left school at fourteen to be mascot of ,,ai lab2 maker of illicit keys and builder of a tiny robot that did the impossible4 ,dan ,sokol ,long-haired prankster who reveled in revealing technological secrets at ,homebrew ,club4 ,helped liberate ,alair ,,basic on paper tape4 ,les ,solomon ,editor of ,popular ,electroics1 the puller of strings who set the computer revolution into motion4 ,marty ,spergel ,the ,junk ,man1 the ,homebrew member who supplied circuits and cables and could make you a deal for anything4 ,richard ,stallman ,the ,last of the ,hackers1 who vowed to defend the principles of ,hackerism to the bitter end4 ,remained at ,,mit until there was no one to eat ,chinese food with4 ,jeff ,stephenson ,thirty-year-old martial arts veteran and hacker who was astounded that joining ,sierra ,on-,line meant enrolling in ,summer ,camp4 ,jay ,sullivan ,m,addeningly clam wizard-level programmer at ,informatics who impressed ,ken ,williams by knowing the meaning of the word any4 ,dick ,sunderland ,chalk-complexioned ,,mba who believed that firm managerial bureaucracy was a worth goal1 but as president of ,sierra ,on-,line found that hackers didn't think that way4 ,gerry ,sussman ,young ,,mit hacker branded loser because he smoked a pipe and munged his programs2 later became winner by algorithmic magic4 ,margot ,tommervik ,with her husband ,al1 long-haired ,margot parlayed her game show winnings into a magazine that deified the ,apple ,computer4 ,tom ,swift ,terminal ,lee ,felsenstein's legendary1 never-to-be-built computer terminal which would give the user ultimate leave to get his hands on the world4 ,,tx-#j ,filled a small room1 but in the late fifties this #c million machine was the world's first personal computer--for the community of ,,mit hackers that formed around it4 ,jim ,warren ,portly purveyor of techno-gossip at ,homebrew1 he was first editor of hippie-styled ,dr4 ,dobbs ,journal1 later started the lucrative ,computer ,faire4 ,randy ,wigginton ,fifteen-year-old member of ,steve ,wozniak's kiddie corps1 he help ,woz trundle the ,apple ,,ii to ,homebrew4 ,still in high school when he became ,apple's first software employee4 ,ken ,williams ,arrogant and brilliant young programmer who saw the writing on the ,,crt and started ,sierra ,on-,line to make a killing and improve society by selling games for the ,apple computer4 ,roberta ,williams ,ken ,williams' timid wife who rediscovered her own creativity by writing ,mystery ,house1 the first of her many bestselling computer games4 ,steven ,woz ,wozniak ,openhearted1 technologically daring hardware hacker from ,san ,jose suburbs4 ,woz built the ,apple ,computer for the pleasure of himself and friends4 ,,part ,,one ,true ,hackers ,,cambridge3 ,the ,fifties and ,sixties ,,chapter #a ,,the ,,tech ,,model ,,railroad ,,club ,just why ,peter ,samson was wandering around in ,building #bf in the middle of the night is a matter that he would find difficult to explain4 ,some things are not spoken4 ,if you were like the people whom ,peter ,samson was coming to know and befriend in this1 his freshman year at the ,massachusetts ,institute of ,technology in the winter of #aieh-ei1 no explanation would be required4 ,wandering around the labyrinth of laboratories and storerooms1 searching for the secrets of telephone switching in machine rooms1 tracing paths of wires or relays in subterranean steam tunnels 4 4 4 for some1 it was common behavior1 and there was no need to justify the impulse1 when confronted with a closed door with an unbearably intriguing noise behind it1 to open the door uninvited4 ,and then1 if there was no one to physically bar access to whatever was making that intriguing noise1 to touch the machine1 start flicking switches and noting responses1 and eventually to loosen a screw1 unhook a template1 jiggle some diodes and tweak a few connections4 ,peter ,samson and his friends had grown up with a specific relationship to the world1 wherein things had meaning only if you found out how they worked4 ,and how would you go about that if not by getting your hands on them8 ,it was in the basement of ,building #bf that ,samson and his friends discovered the ,,eam room4 ,building #bf was a long glass-and-steel structure1 one of ,,mit's newer buildings1 contrasting with the venerable pillared structures that fronted the ,institute on ,massachusetts ,avenue4 ,in the basement of this building void of personality1 the ,,eam room4 ,electronic ,accounting ,machinery4 ,a room that housed machines which ran like computers4 ,not many people in #aiei had even seen a computer1 let alone touched one4 ,samson1 a wiry1 curly-haired redhead with a way of extending his vowels so that it would seem he was racing through lists of possible meanings of statements in mid-word1 had viewed computers on his visits to ,,mit from his hometown of ,lowell1 ,massachusetts1 less than thirty miles from campus4 ,this made him a ,cambridge urchin1 one of dozens of science-crazy high schoolers in the region who were drawn1 as if by gravitational pull1 to the ,cambridge campus4 ,he had even tried to rig up his own computer with discarded parts of old pinball machines3 they were the best source of logic elements he could find4 ,,logic ,,elements3 the term seems to encapsulate what drew ,peter ,samson1 son of a mill machinery repairman1 to electronics4 ,the subject made sense4 ,when you grow up with an insatiable curiosity as to how things work1 the delight you find upon discovering something as elegant as circuit logic1 where all connections have to complete their loops1 is profoundly thrilling4 ,peter ,samson1 who early on appreciated the mathematical simplicity of these things1 could recall seeing a television show on ,boston's public ,,tv channel1 ,,wgbh1 which gave a rudimentary introduction to programming a computer in its own language4 ,it fired his imagination3 to ,peter ,samson1 a computer was surely like ,aladdin's lamp--rub it1 and it would do your bidding4 ,so he tried to learn more about the field1 built machines of his own1 entered science project competitions and contests1 and went to the place that people of his ilk aspired to3 ,,mit4 ,the repository of the very brightest of those weird high school kids with owl-like glasses and underdeveloped pectorals who dazzled math teachers and flunked ,,pe1 who dreamed not of scoring on prom night1 but of getting to the finals of the ,general ,electric ,science ,fair competition4 ,,mit1 where he would wander the hallways at two o'clock in the morning1 looking for something interesting1 and where he would indeed discover something that would help draw him deeply into a new form of creative process1 and a new life-style1 and would put him into the forefront of a society envisioned only by a few science-fiction writers of mild disrepute4 ,he would discover a computer that he could play with4 ,the ,,eam room which ,samson had chanced on was loaded with large keypunch machines the size of squat file cabinets4 ,no one was protecting them3 the room was staffed only by day1 when a select group who had attained official clearance were privileged enough to submit long manila cards to operators who would then use these machines to punch holes in them according to what data the privileged ones wanted entered on the cards4 ,a hole in the card would represent some instruction to the computer1 telling it to put a piece of data somewhere1 or perform a function on a piece of data1 or move a piece of data from one place to another4 ,an entire stack of these cards made one computer program1 a program being a series of instructions which yield some expected result1 just as the instructions in a recipe1 when precisely followed1 lead to a cake4 ,those cards would be taken to yet another operator upstairs who would feed the cards into a reader that would note where the holes were and dispatch this information to the ,,ibm #gjd computer on the first floor of ,building #bf4 ,the ,hulking ,giant4 ,the ,,ibm #gjd cost several million dollars1 took up an entire room1 needed constant attention from a cadre of professional machine operators1 and required special air-conditioning so that the glowing vacuum tubes inside it would not heat up to data-destroying temperatures4 ,when the air-conditioning broke down--a fairly common occurrences--a loud gong would sound1 and three engineers would spring from a nearby office to frantically take covers off the machine so its innards wouldn't melt4 ,all these people in charge of punching cards1 feeding them into readers1 and pressing buttons and switches on the machine were what was commonly called a ,priesthood1 and those privileged enough to submit data to those most holy priests were the official acolytes4 ,it was an almost ritualistic exchange4 ,,acolyte3 ,oh machine1 would you accept my offer of information so you may run my program and perhaps give me a computation8 ,,priest 7on behalf of the machine73 ,we will try4 ,we promise nothing4 ,as a general rule1 even these most privileged of acolytes were not allowed direct access to the machine itself1 and they would not be able to see for hours1 sometimes for days1 the results of the machine's ingestion of their batch of cards4 ,this was something ,samson knew1 and of course it frustrated the hell out of ,samson1 who wanted to get at the damn machine4 ,for this was what life was all about4 ,what ,samson did not know1 and was delighted to discover1 was that the ,,eam room also had a particular keypunch machine called the #djg4 ,not only could it punch cards1 but it could also read cards1 sort them1 and print them on listings4 ,no one seemed to be guarding these machines1 which were computers1 sort of4 ,of course1 using them would be no picnic3 one needed to actually wire up what was called a plug board1 a two-inch-by-two-inch plastic square with a mass of holes in it4 ,if you put hundreds of wires through the holes in a certain order1 you would get something that looked like a rat's nest but would fit into this electromechanical machine and alter its personality4 ,it could do what you wanted it to do4 ,so1 without any authorization whatsoever1 that is what ,peter ,samson set out to do1 along with a few friends of his from an ,,mit organization with a special interest in model railroading4 ,it was a casual1 unthinking step into a science-fiction future1 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 impolite1 unsanctioned soul of computerdom4 ,it was among the first computer hacker escapades of the ,tech ,model ,railroad ,club1 or ,,tmrc4 99 99 99 ,peter ,samson had been a member of the ,tech ,model ,railroad ,club since his first week at ,,mit in the fall of #aieh4 ,the first event that entering ,,mit freshmen attended was a traditional welcoming lecture1 the same one that had been given for as long as anyone at ,,mit could remember4 ,,look ,,at ,,the ,,person ,,to ,,your ,,left 4 4 4 ,,look ,,at ,,the ,,person ,,to ,,your ,,right 4 4 4 ,,one ,,of ,,you ,,three ,,will ,,not ,,graduate ,,from ,,the ,,institute4 ,the intended effect of the speech was to create that horrid feeling in the back of the collective freshman throat that signaled unprecedented dread4 ,all their lives1 these freshmen had been almost exempt from academic pressure4 ,the exemption had been earned by virtue of brilliance4 ,now each of them had a person to the right and a person to the left who was just as smart4 ,maybe even smarter4 ,but to certain students this was no challenge at all4 ,to these youngsters1 classmates were perceived in a sort of friendly haze3 maybe they would be of assistance in the consuming quest to find out how things worked1 and then to master them4 ,there were enough obstacles to learning already--why bother with stupid things like brown-nosing teachers and striving for grades8 ,to students like ,peter ,samson1 the quest meant more than the degree4 ,sometime after the lecture came ,freshman ,midway4 ,all the campus organizations--special-interest groups1 fraternities1 and such-- set up booths in a large gymnasium to try to recruit new members4 ,the group that snagged ,peter was the ,tech ,model ,railroad ,club4 ,its members1 bright-eyed and crew-cutted upperclassmen who spoke with the spasmodic cadences of people who want words out of the way in a hurry1 boasted a spectacular display of ,,ho gauge trains they had in a permanent clubroom in ,building #bj4 ,peter ,samson had long been fascinated by trains1 especially subways4 ,so he went along on the walking tour to the building1 a shingle-clad temporary structure built during ,world ,war ,,ii4 ,the hallways were cavernous1 and even though the clubroom was on the second floor it had the dank1 dimly lit feel of a basement4 ,the clubroom was dominated by the huge train layout4 ,it just about filled the room1 and if you stood in the little control area called the notch you could see a little town1 a little industrial area1 a tiny working trolley line1 a papier-mache mountain1 and of course a lot of trains and tracks4 ,the trains were meticulously crafted to resemble their full-scale counterparts1 and they chugged along the twists and turns of track with picture-book perfection4 ,and then ,peter ,samson looked underneath the chest-high boards which held the layout4 ,it took his breath away4 ,underneath this layout was a more massive matrix of wires and relays1and crossbar switches than ,peter ,samson had ever dreamed existed4 ,there were neat regimental lines of switches1 and achingly regular rows of dull bronze relays1 and a long1 rambling tangle of red1 blue1 and yellow wires--twisting and twirling like a rainbow-colored explosion of ,einstein's hair4 ,it was an incredibly complicated system1 and ,peter ,samson vowed to find out how it worked4 ,the ,tech ,model ,railroad ,club awarded its members a key to the clubroom after they logged forty hours of work on the layout4 ,freshman ,midway had been on a ,friday4 ,by ,monday1 ,peter ,samson had his key4 99 99 99 ,there were two factions of ,,tmrc4 ,some members loved the idea of spending their time building and painting replicas of certain trains with historical and emotional value1 or creating realistic scenery for the layout4 ,this was the knife-and-paintbrush contingent1 and it subscribed to railroad magazines and booked the club for trips on aging train lines4 ,the other faction centered on the ,signals and ,power ,subcommittee of the club1 and it cared far more about what went on under the layout4 ,this was ,the ,system1 which worked something like a collaboration between ,rube ,goldberg and ,wernher von ,braun1 and it was constantly being improved1 revamped1 perfected1 and sometimes gronked--in club jargon1 screwed up4 ,s,p people were obsessed with the way ,the ,system worked1 its increasing complexities1 how any change you made would affect other parts1 and how you could put those relationships between the parts to optimal use4 ,many of the parts for ,the ,system had been donated by the ,western ,electric ,college ,gift ,plan1 directly from the phone company4 ,the club's faculty advisor was also in charge of the campus phone system1 and had seen to it that sophisticated phone equipment was available for the model railroaders4 ,using that equipment as a starting point1 the ,railroaders had devised a scheme which enabled several people to control trains at once1 even if the trains were at different parts of the same track4 ,using dials appropriated from telephones1 the ,,tmrc engineers could specify which block of track they wanted control of1 and run a train from there4 ,this was done by using several types of phone company relays1 including crossbar executors and step switches which let you actually hear the power being transferred from one block to another by an other-worldly chunka-chunka-chunka sound4 ,it was the ,s,p group who devised this fiendishly ingenious scheme1 and it was the ,s,p group who harbored the kind of restless curiosity which led them to root around campus buildings in search of ways to get their hands on computers4 ,they were lifelong disciples of a ,hands-,on ,imperative4 ,head of ,s,p was an upperclassman named ,bob ,saunders1 with ruddy1 bulbous features1 an infectious laugh1 and a talent for switch gear4 ,as a child in ,chicago1 he had built a high-frequency transformer for a high school project2 it was his six-foot-high version of a ,tesla coil1 something devised by an engineer in the #ahjjs which was supposed to send out furious waves of electrical power4 ,saunders said his coil project managed to blow out television reception for blocks around4 ,another person who gravitated to ,s,p was ,alan ,kotok1 a plump1 chinless1 thick-spectacled ,new ,jerseyite in ,samson's class4 ,kotok's family could recall him1 at age three1 prying a plug out of a wall with a screwdriver and causing a hissing shower of sparks to erupt4 ,when he was six1 he was building and wiring lamps4 ,in high school he had once gone on a tour of the ,mobil ,research ,lab in nearby ,haddonfield1 and saw his first computer--the exhilaration of that experience helped him decide to enter ,,mit4 ,in his freshman year1 he earned a reputation as one of ,,tmrc's most capable ,s,p people4 ,the ,s,p people were the ones who spent ,saturdays going to ,eli ,heffron's junkyard in ,somerville scrounging for parts1 who would spend hours on their backs resting on little rolling chairs they called bunkies to get underneath tight spots in the switching system1 who would work through the night making the wholly unauthorized connection between the ,,tmrc phone and the ,east ,campus4 ,technology was their playground4 ,the core members hung out at the club for hours2 constantly improving ,the ,system1 arguing about what could be done next1 developing a jargon of their own that seemed incomprehensible to outsiders who might chance on these teen-aged fanatics1 with their checked short-sleeve shirts1 pencils in their pockets1 chino pants1 and1 always1 a bottle of ,coca-,cola by their side4 7,,tmrc purchased its own ,coke machine for the then forbidding sum of #afe2 at a tariff of five cents a bottle1 the outlay was replaced in three months2 to facilitate sales1 ,saunders built a change machine for ,coke buyers that was still in use a decade later47 ,when a piece of equipment wasn't working1 it was losing2 when a piece of equipment was ruined1 it was munged 7,mash ,until ,no ,good72 the two desks in the corner of the room were not called the office1 but the orifice2 one who insisted on studying for courses was a tool2 garbage was called cruft2 and a project undertaken or a product built not solely to fulfill some constructive goal1 but with some wild pleasure taken in mere involvement1 was called a hack4 ,this latter term may have been suggested by ancient ,,mit lingo-- the word hack had long been used to describe the elaborate college pranks that ,,mit students would regularly devise1 such as covering the dome that overlooked the campus with reflecting foil4 ,but as the ,,tmrc people used the word1 there was serious respect implied4 ,while someone might call a clever connection between relays a mere hack1 it would be understood that1 to qualify as a hack1 the feat must be imbued with innovation1 style1 and technical virtuosity4 ,even though one might self-deprecatingly say he was hacking away at ,the ,system 7much as an axe-wielder hacks at logs71 the artistry with which one hacked was recognized to be considerable4 ,the most productive people working on ,signals and ,power called themselves hackers with great pride4 ,within the confines of the clubroom in ,building #bj1 and of the ,tool ,room 7where some study and many techno bull sessions took place71 they had unilaterally endowed themselves with the heroic attributes of ,icelandic legend4 ,this is how ,peter ,samson saw himself and his friends in a ,sandburg-esque poem in the club newsletter3 ,switch ,thrower for the ,world1 ,fuze ,tester1 ,maker of ,routes1 ,player with the ,railroads and the ,system's ,advance ,chopper2 ,grungy1 hairy1 sprawling1 ,machine of the ,point-,function ,line-o-lite3 ,they tell me you are wicked and ,i believe them2 for ,i have seen your painted light bulbs under the lucite luring the system coolies 4 4 4 ,under the tower1 dust all over the place1 hacking with bifur- cated springs 4 4 4 ,hacking even as an ignorant freshman acts who has never lost occupancy and has dropped out ,hacking the ,m-,boards1 for under its locks are the switches1 and under its control the advance around the layout1 ,hacking6 ,hacking the grungy1 hairy1 sprawling hacks of youth2 uncabled1 frying diodes1 proud to be ,switch-thrower1 ,fuze- tester1 ,maker of ,routes1 ,player with ,railroads1 and ,advance ,chopper to the ,system4 ,whenever they could1 ,samson and the others would slip off to the ,,eam room with their plug boards1 trying to use the machine to keep track of the switches underneath the layout4 ,just as important1 they were seeing what the electromechanical counter could do1 taking it to its limit4 ,that spring of #aiei1 a new course was offered at ,,mit4 ,it was the first course in programming a computer that freshmen could take4 ,the teacher was a distant man with a wild shock of hair and an equally unruly beard--,john ,mc,carthy4 ,a master mathematician1 ,mc,carthy was a classically absent-minded professor2 stories abounded about his habit of suddenly answering a question hours1 sometimes even days after it was first posed to him4 ,he would approach you in the hallway1 and with no salutation would begin speaking in his robotically precise diction1 as if the pause in conversation had been only a fraction of a second1 and not a week4 ,most likely1 his belated response would be brilliant4 ,mc,carthy was one of a very few people working in an entirely new form of scientific inquiry with computers4 ,the volatile and controversial nature of his field of study was obvious from the very arrogance of the name that ,mc,carthy had bestowed upon it3 ,artificial ,intelligence4 ,this man actually thought that computers could be ,,smart4 ,even at such a science-intensive place as ,,mit1 most people considered the thought ridiculous3 they considered computers to be useful1 if somewhat absurdly expensive1 tools for number-crunching huge calculations and for devising missile defense systems 7as ,,mit's largest computer1 the ,whirlwind1 had done for the early-warning ,,sage system71 but scoffed at the thought that computers themselves could actually be a scientific field of study1 ,computer ,science did not officially exist at ,,mit in the late fifties1 and ,mc,carthy and his fellow computer specialists worked in the ,electrical ,engineering ,department1 which offered the course1 ,no4 #fda1 that ,kotok1 ,samson1 and a few other ,,trmc members took that spring4 ,mc,carthy had started a mammoth program on the ,,ibm #gjd--the ,hulking ,giant--that would give it the extraordinary ability to play chess4 ,to critics of the budding field of ,artificial ,intelligence1 this was just one example of the boneheaded optimism of people like ,john ,mc,carthy4 ,but ,mc,carthy had a certain vision of what computers could do1 and playing chess was only the beginning4 ,all fascinating stuff1 but not the vision that was driving ,kotok and ,samson and the others4 ,they wanted to learn how to ,,work the damn machines1 and while this new programming language called ,,lisp that ,mc,carthy was talking about in #fda was interesting1 it was not nearly as interesting as the act of programming1 or that fantastic moment when you got your printout back from the ,priesthood--word from the source itself6--and could then spend hours poring over the results of the program1 what had gone wrong with it1 how it could be improved4 ,the ,,tmrc hackers were devising ways to get into closer contact with the ,,ibm #gjd1 which soon was upgraded to a newer model called the #gji4 ,by hanging out at the computation center in the wee hours of the morning1 and by getting to know the ,priesthood1 and by bowing and scraping the requisite number of times1 people like ,kotok were eventually allowed to push a few buttons on the machine1 and watch the lights as it worked4 ,there were secrets to those ,,ibm machines that had been painstakingly learned by some of the older people at ,,mit with access to the #gjd and friends among the ,priesthood4 ,amazingly1 a few of these programmers1 grad students working with ,mc,carthy1 had even written a program that utilized one of the rows of tiny lights3 the lights would be lit in such an order that it looked like a little ball was being passed from right to left3 if an operator hit a switch at just the right time1 the motion of the lights could be reversed--,computer ,ping-,pong6 ,this obviously was the kind of thing that you'd show off to impress your peers1 who would then take a look at the actual program you had written and see how it was done4 ,to top the program1 someone else might try to do the same thing with fewer instructions--a worthy endeavor1 since there was so little room in the small memory of the computers of those days that not many instructions could fit into them1 ,john ,mc,carthy had once noticed how his graduate students who loitered around the #gjd would work over their computer programs to get the most out of the fewest instructions1 and get the program compressed so that fewer cards would need to be fed to the machine4 ,shaving off an instruction or two was almost an obsession with them4 ,mc,carthy compared these students to ski bums4 ,they got the same kind of primal thrill from maximizing code as fanatic skiers got from swooshing frantically down a hill4 ,so the practice of taking a computer program and trying to cut off instructions without affecting the outcome came to be called program bumming1 and you would often hear people mumbling things like ,maybe ,i can bum a few instructions out and get the octal correction card loader down to three cards instead of four4 ,mc,carthy in #aiei was turning his interest from chess to a new way of talking to the computer1 the whole new language called ,,lisp4 ,alan ,kotok and his friends were more than eager to take over the chess project4 ,working on the batch-processed ,,ibm1 they embarked on the gargantuan project of teaching the #gjd1 and later the #gji1 and even after that its replacement the #gjij1 how to play the game of kings4 ,eventually ,kotok's group became the largest users of computer time in the entire ,,mit computation center4 ,still1 working with the ,,ibm machine was frustrating4 ,there was nothing worse than the long wait between the time you handed in your cards and the time your results were handed back to you4 ,if you had misplaced as much as one letter in one instruction1 the program would crash1 and you would have to start the whole process over again4 ,it went hand in hand with the stifling proliferation of goddamn ,,rules that permeated the atmosphere of the computation center4 ,most of the rules were designed to keep crazy young computer fans like ,samson and ,kotok and ,saunders physically distant from the machine itself4 ,the most rigid rule of all was that no one should be able to actually touch or tamper with the machine itself4 ,this1 of course1 was what those ,signals and ,power people were dying to do more than anything else in the world1 and the restrictions drove them mad4 ,one priest--a low-level sub-priest1 really--on the late-night shift was particularly nasty in enforcing this rule1 so ,samson devised a suitable revenge4 ,while poking around at ,eli's electronic junk shop one day1 he chanced upon an electrical board precisely like the kind of board holding the clunky vacuum tubes which resided inside the ,,ibm4 ,one night1 sometime before #d ,a4,m41 this particular sub-priest stepped out for a minute2 when he returned1 ,samson told him that the machine wasn't working1 but they'd found the trouble--and held up the totally smashed module from the old #gjd he'd gotten at ,eli's4 ,the sub-priest could hardly get the words out4 ,w-where did you get that8 ,samson1 who had wide green eyes that could easily look maniacal1 slowly pointed to an open place on the machine rack where1 of course1 no board had ever been1 but the space still looked sadly bare4 ,the sub-priest gasped4 ,he made faces that indicated his bowels were about to give out4 ,he whimpered exhortations to the deity4 ,visions1 no doubt1 of a million-dollar deduction from his paycheck began flashing before him4 ,only after his supervisor1 a high priest with some understanding of the mentality of these young wiseguys from the ,model ,railroad ,club1 came and explained the situation did he calm down4 ,he was not the last administrator to feel the wrath of a hacker thwarted in the quest for access4 99 99 99 ,one day a former ,,tmrc member who was now on the ,,mit faculty paid a visit to the clubroom4 ,his name was ,jack ,dennis4 ,when he had been an undergraduate in the early #aiejs1 he had worked furiously underneath the layout4 ,dennis lately had been working a computer which ,,mit had just received from ,lincoln ,lab1 a military development laboratory affiliated with the ,institute4 ,the computer was called the ,,tx-#j1 and it was one of the first transistor-run computers in the world4 ,lincoln ,lab had used it specifically to test a giant computer called the ,,tx-#b1 which had a memory so complex that only with this specially built little brother could its ills be capably diagnosed4 ,now that its original job was over1 the three-million-dollar ,,tx-#j had been shipped over to the ,institute on long-term loan1 and apparently no one at ,lincoln ,lab had marked a calendar with a return date4 ,dennis asked the ,s,p people at ,,tmrc whether they would like to see it4 ,hey you nuns6 ,would you like to meet the ,pope8 ,the ,,tx-#j was in ,building #bf1 in the second-floor ,radio ,laboratory of ,electronics 7,,rle71 directly above the first-floor ,computation ,center which housed the hulking ,,ibm #gjd4 ,the ,,rle lab resembled the control room of an antique spaceship4 ,the ,,tx-#j1 or ,tixo1 as it was sometimes called1 was for its time a midget machine1 since it was one of the first computers to use finger-size transistors instead of hand-size vacuum tubes4 ,still1 it took up much of the room1 along with its fifteen tons of supporting air-conditioning equipment4 ,the ,,tx-,o's workings were mounted on several tall1 thin chassis1 like rugged metal bookshelves1 with tangled wires and neat little rows of tiny1 bottle-like containers in which the transistors were inserted4 ,another rack had a solid metal front speckled with grim-looking gauges4 ,facing the racks was an ,l-shaped console1 the control panel of this ,h4 ,g4 ,wells spaceship1 with a blue countertop for your elbows and papers4 ,on the short arm of the ,l stood a ,flexowriter1 which resembled a typewriter converted for tank warfare1 its bottom anchored in a military gray housing4 ,above the top were the control panels1 boxlike protrusions painted an institutional yellow4 ,on the sides of the boxes which faced the user were a few gauges1 several lines of quarter-inch blinking lights1 a matrix of steel toggle switches the size of large grains of rice1 and1 best of all1 an actual cathode ray tube display1 round and smoke-gray4 ,the ,,tmrc people were awed4 ,,this ,,machine ,,did ,,not ,,use ,,cards4 ,the user would first punch in a program onto a long1 thin paper tape with a ,flexowriter 7there were a few extra ,flexowriters in an adjoining room71 then sit at the console1 feed in the program by running the tape through a reader1 and be able to sit there while the program ran4 ,if something went wrong with the program1 you knew immediately1 and you could diagnose the problem by using some of the switches1 or checking out which of the lights were blinking or lit4 ,the computer even had an audio output3 while the program ran1 a speaker underneath the console would make a sort of music1 like a poorly tuned electric organ whose notes would vibrate with a fuzzy1 ethereal din4 ,the chords on this organ would change1 depending on what data the machine was reading at any given microsecond2 after you were familiar with the tones1 you could actually ,,hear what part of your program the computer was working on4 ,you would have to discern this1 though1 over the clacking of the ,flexowriter1 which could make you think you were in the middle of a machine-gun battle4 ,even more amazing was that1 because of these interactive capabilities1 and also because users seemed to be allowed blocks of time to use the ,,tx-#j all by themselves1 you could even modify a program ,,while ,,sitting ,,at ,,the ,,computer4 ,a miracle6 ,there was no way in hell that ,kotok1 ,saunders1 ,samson1 and the others were going to be kept away from that machine4 ,fortunately1 there didn't seem to be the kind of bureaucracy surrounding the ,,tx-#j that there was around the ,,ibm #gjd4 ,no cadre of officious priests4 ,the technician in charge was a canny white-haired ,scotsman named ,john ,mc,kenzie4 ,while he made sure that graduate students and those working on funded projects-- ,officially ,sanctioned ,users--maintained access to the machine1 ,mc,kenzie tolerated the crew of ,,tmrc madmen who began to hang out in the ,,rle lab1 where the ,,tx-#j stood4 ,samson1 ,kotok1 ,saunders1 and a freshman named ,bob ,wagner soon figured out that the best time of all to hang out in ,building #bf was at night1 when no person in his right mind would have signed up for an hour-long session on the piece of paper posted every ,friday beside the air conditioner in the ,,rle lab4 ,the ,,tx-#j as a rule was kept running twenty-four hours a day--computers back then were too expensive for their time to be wasted by leaving them idle through the night1 and besides1 it was a hairy procedure to get the thing up and running once it was turned off4 ,so the ,,tmrc hackers1 who soon were referring to themselves as ,,tx-#j hackers1 changed their life-style to accommodate the computer4 ,they laid claim to what blocks of time they could1 and would vulture time with nocturnal visits to the lab on the off chance that someone who was scheduled for a #c ,a4,m4 session might not show up4 ,oh6 ,samson would say delightedly1 a minute or so after someone failed to show up at the time designated in the logbook4 ,make sure it doesn't go to waste6 ,it never seemed to1 because the hackers were there almost all the time4 ,if they weren't in the ,,rle lab waiting for an opening to occur1 they were in the classroom next to the ,,tmrc clubroom1 the ,tool ,room1 playing a hangman-style word game that ,samson had devised called ,come ,next ,door1 waiting for a call from someone who was near the ,,tx-#j1 monitoring it to see if someone had not shown up for a session4 ,the hackers recruited a network of informers to give advance notice of potential openings at the computer--if a research project was not ready with its program in time1 or a professor was sick1 the word would be passed to ,,tmrc and the hackers would appear at the ,,tx-#j1 breathless and ready to jam into the space behind the console4 ,though ,jack ,dennis was theoretically in charge of the operation1 ,dennis was teaching courses at the time1 and preferred to spend the rest of his time actually writing code for the machine4 ,dennis played the role of benevolent godfather to the hackers3 he would give them a brief hands-on introduction to the machine1 point them in certain directions1 be amused at their wild programming ventures4 ,he had little taste for administration1 though1 and was just as happy to let ,john ,mc,kenzie run things4 ,mc,kenzie early on recognized that the interactive nature of the ,,tx-#j was inspiring a new form of computer programming1 and the hackers were its pioneers4 ,so he did not lay down too many edicts4 ,the atmosphere was loose enough in #aiei to accommodate the strays--science-mad people whose curiosity burned like a hunger1 who like ,peter ,samson would be exploring the uncharted maze of laboratories at ,,mit4 ,the noise of the air-conditioning1 the audio output1 and the drill-hammer ,flexowriter would lure these wanderers1 who'd poke their heads into the lab like kittens peering into baskets of yarn4 ,one of those wanderers was an outsider named ,peter ,deutsch4 ,even before discovering the ,,tx-#j1 ,deutsch had developed a fascination for computers4 ,it began one day when he picked up a manual that someone had discarded1 a manual for an obscure form of computer language for doing calculations4 ,something about the orderliness of the computer instructions appealed to him3 he would later describe the feeling as the same kind of eerily transcendent recognition that an artist experiences when he discovers the medium that is absolutely right for him4 ,,this ,,is ,,where ,i ,,belong4 ,deutsch tried writing a small program1 and1 signing up for time under the name of one of the priests1 ran it on a computer4 ,within weeks1 he had attained a striking proficiency in programming4 ,he was only twelve years old4 ,he was a shy kid1 strong in math and unsure of most everything else4 ,he was uncomfortably overweight1 deficient in sports1 but an intellectual star performer4 ,his father was a professor at ,,mit1 and ,peter used that as his entree to explore the labs4 ,it was inevitable that he would be drawn to the ,,tx-#j4 ,he first wandered into the small ,kluge ,room 7a kluge is a piece of inelegantly constructed equipment that seems to defy logic by working properly71 where three off-line ,flexowriters were available for punching programs onto paper tape which would later be fed into the ,,tx-#j4 ,someone was busy punching in a tape4 ,peter watched for a while1 then began bombarding the poor soul with questions about that weird-looking little computer in the next room4 ,then ,peter went up to the ,,tx-#j itself1 examined it closely1 noting how it differed from other computers3 it was smaller1 had a ,,crt display1 and other neat toys4 ,he decided right then to act as if he had a perfect right to be there4 ,he got hold of a manual and soon was startling people by spouting actual make-sense computer talk1 and eventually was allowed to sign up for night and weekend sessions1 and to write his own programs4 ,mc,kenzie worried that someone might accuse him of running some sort of summer camp1 with this short-pants little kid1 barely tall enough to stick his head over the ,,tx-,o's console1 staring at the code that an ,officially ,sanctioned ,user1 perhaps some self-important graduate student1 would be hammering into the ,flexowriter1 and saying in his squeaky1 preadolescent voice something like ,your problem is that this credit is wrong over here 4 4 4 you need this other instruction over there1 and the self-important grad student would go crazy--,,who ,,is ,,this ,,little ,,worm8--and start screaming at him to go out and play somewhere4 ,invariably1 though1 ,peter ,deutsch's comments would turn out to be correct4 ,deutsch would also brazenly announce that he was going to write better programs than the ones currently available1 and he would go and do it4 ,samson1 ,kotok1 and the other hackers accepted ,peter ,deutsch3 by virtue of his computer knowledge he was worthy of equal treatment4 ,deutsch was not such a favorite with the ,officially ,sanctioned ,users1 especially when he sat behind them ready to spring into action when they made a mistake on the ,flexowriter4 ,these ,officially ,sanctioned ,users appeared at the ,,tx-#j with the regularity of commuters4 ,the programs they ran were statistical analyses1 cross correlations1 simulations of an interior of the nucleus of a cell4 ,applications4 ,that was fine for ,users1 but it was sort of a waste in the minds of the hackers4 ,what hackers had in mind was getting behind the console of the ,,tx-#j much in the same way as getting in behind the throttle of a plane1 ,or1 as ,peter ,samson1 a classical music fan1 put it1 computing with the ,,tx-#j was like playing a musical instrument3 an absurdly expensive musical instrument upon which you could improvise1 compose1 and1 like the beatniks in ,harvard ,square a mile away1 wail like a banshee with total creative abandon4 ,one thing that enabled them to do this was the programming system devised by ,jack ,dennis and another professor1 ,tom ,stockman4 ,when the ,,tx-#j arrived at ,,mit1 it had been stripped down since its days at ,lincoln ,lab3 the memory had been reduced considerably1 to #d1jif words of eighteen bits each4 7,a bit is a ,b,inary digi,t1 either a one or zero4 ,these binary numbers are the only thing computers understand4 ,a series of binary numbers is called a word47 ,and the ,,tx-#j had almost no software4 ,so ,jack ,dennis1 even before he introduced the ,,tmrc people to the ,,tx-#j1 had been writing systems programs--the software to help users utilize the machine4 ,the first thing ,dennis worked on was an assembler4 ,this was something that translated assembly language--which used three- letter symbolic abbreviations that represented instructions to the machine--into machine language1 which consisted of the binary numbers #j and #a4 ,the ,,tx-#j had a rather limited assembly language3 since its design allowed only two bits of each eighteen-bit word to be used for instructions to the computer1 only four instructions could be used 7each possible two-bit variation--#jj1 #j #a1 #aj1 and #aa--represented an instruction74 ,everything the computer did could be broken down to the execution of one of those four instructions3 it took one instruction to add two numbers1 but a series of perhaps twenty instructions to multiply two numbers4 ,staring at a long list of computer commands written as binary numbers--for example1 #ajjaajjaajjjja-- could make you into a babbling mental case in a matter of minutes4 ,but the same command in assembly language might look like this3 ,,add ,y4 ,after loading the computer with the assembler that ,dennis wrote1 you could write programs in this simpler symbolic form1 and wait smugly while the computer did the translation into binary for you1 ,then you'd feed that binary object code back into the computer4 ,the value of this was incalculable3 it enabled programmers to write in something that ,,looked like code1 rather than an endless1 dizzying series of ones and zeros4 ,the other program that ,dennis worked on with ,stockman was something even newer--a debugger4 ,the ,,tx-#j came with a debugging program called ,,ut-#c1 which enabled you to talk to the computer while it was running by typing commands directly into the ,flexowriter1 ,but it had terrible problems-for one thing1 it only accepted typed-in code that used the octal numeric system4 ,octal is a base-eight number system 7as opposed to binary1 which is base two1 and ,arabic--ours-which is base ten71 and it is a difficult system to use4 ,so ,dennis and ,stockman decided to write something better than ,,ut-#c which would enable users to use the symbolic1 easier-to-work-with assembly language4 ,this came to be called ,,flit1 and it allowed users to actually find program bugs during a session1 fix them1 and keep the program running4 7,dennis would explain that ,,flit stood for ,f,lexowriter ,interrogation ,tape1 but clearly the name's real origin was the insect spray with that brand name47 ,,flit was a quantum leap forward1 since it liberated programmers to actually do original composing on the machine--just like musicians composing on their musical instruments4 ,with the use of the debugger1 which took up one third of the #d1jif words of the ,,tx-,o's memory1 hackers were free to create a new1 more daring style of programming4 ,and what did these hacker programs ,,do8 ,well1 sometimes1 it didn't matter much at all what they did4 ,peter ,samson hacked the night away on a program that would instantly convert ,arabic numbers to ,roman numerals1 and ,jack ,dennis1 after admiring the skill with which ,samson had accomplished this feat1 said1 ,my ,god1 why would anyone want to do such a thing8 ,but ,dennis knew why4 ,there was ample justification in the feeling of power and accomplishment ,samson got when he fed in the paper tape1 monitored the lights and switches1 and saw what were once plain old blackboard ,arabic numbers coming back as the numerals the ,romans had hacked with4 ,in fact it was ,jack ,dennis who suggested to ,samson that there were considerable uses for the ,,tx-,o's ability to send noise to the audio speaker4 ,while there were no built-in controls for pitch1 amplitude1 or tone character1 there was a way to control the speaker--sounds would be emitted depending on the state of the fourteenth bit in the eighteen-bit words the ,,tx-#j had in its accumulator in a given microsecond4 ,the sound was on or off depending on whether bit fourteen was a one or zero4 ,so ,samson set about writing programs that varied the binary numbers in that slot in different ways to produce different pitches4 ,at that time1 only a few people in the country had been experimenting with using a computer to output any kind of music1 and the methods they had been using required massive computations before the machine would so much as utter a note1 ,samson1 who reacted with impatience to those who warned he was attempting the impossible1 wanted a computer playing music right away4 ,so he learned to control that one bit in the accumulator so adeptly that he could command it with the authority of ,charlie ,parker on the saxophone4 ,in a later version of this music compiler1 ,samson rigged it so that if you made an error in your programming syntax1 the ,flexowriter would switch to a red ribbon and print ,to err is human to forgive divine4 ,when outsiders heard the melodies of ,johann ,sebastian ,bach in a single-voice1 monophonic square wave1 no harmony1 they were universally unfazed4 ,big deal6 ,three million dollars for this giant hunk of machinery1 and why shouldn't it do at least as much as a five-dollar toy piano8 ,it was no use to explain to these outsiders that ,peter ,samson had virtually bypassed the process by which music had been made for eons4 ,music had always been made by directly creating vibrations that were sound4 ,what happened in ,samson's program was that a load of numbers1 bits of information fed into a computer1 comprised a code in which the music resided4 ,you could spend hours staring at the code1 and not be able to divine where the music was4 ,it only became music while millions of blindingly brief exchanges of data were taking place in the accumulator sitting in one of the metal1 wire1 and silicon racks that comprised the ,,tx-#j4 ,samson had asked the computer1 which had no apparent knowledge of how to use a voice1 to lift itself in song--and the ,,tx-#j had complied4 ,so it was that a computer program was not only metaphorically a musical composition--it was ,,literally a musical composition6 ,it looked like--and was--the same kind of program which yielded complex arithmetical computations and statistical analyses4 ,these digits that ,samson had jammed into the computer were a universal language which could produce ,,anything--a ,bach fugue or an anti-aircraft system4 ,samson did not say any of this to the outsiders who were unimpressed by his feat4 ,nor did the hackers themselves discuss this--it is not even clear that they analyzed the phenomenon in such cosmic terms4 ,peter ,samson did it1 and his colleagues appreciated it1 because it was obviously a neat hack4 ,that was justification enough4 99 99 99 ,to hackers like ,bob ,saunders--balding1 plump1 and merry disciple of the ,,tx-#j1 president of ,,tmrc's ,s,p group1 student of systems-- it was a perfect existence4 ,saunders had grown up in the suburbs of ,chicago1 and for as long as he could remember the workings of electricity and telephone circuitry had fascinated him4 ,before beginning ,,mit1 ,saunders had landed a dream summer job1 working for the phone company installing central office equipment1 ,he would spend eight blissful hours with soldering iron and pliers in hand1 working in the bowels of various systems1 an idyll broken by lunch hours spent in deep study of phone company manuals4 ,it was the phone company equipment underneath the ,,tmrc layout that had convinced ,saunders to become active in the ,model ,railroad ,club4 ,saunders1 being an upperclassman1 had come to the ,,tx-#j later in his college career than ,kotok and ,samson3 he had used the breathing space to actually lay the foundation for a social life1 which included courtship of and eventual marriage to ,marge ,french1 who had done some non-hacking computer work for a research project4 ,still1 the ,,tx-#j was the center of his college career1 and he shared the common hacker experience of seeing his grades suffer from missed classes4 ,it didn't bother him much1 because he knew that his real education was occurring in ,room #bdj of ,building #bf1 behind the ,tixo console4 ,years later he would describe himself and the others as an elite group4 ,other people were off studying1 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 do4 ,and we were simply not paying attention to what other folks were doing because we had no interest in it4 ,they were studying what they were studying and we were studying what we were studying4 ,and the fact that much of it was not on the officially approved curriculum was by and large immaterial4 ,the hackers came out at night4 ,it was the only way to take full advantage of the crucial off-hours of the ,,tx-#j4 ,during the day1 ,saunders would usually manage to make an appearance in a class or two4 ,then some time spent performing basic maintenance--things like eating and going to the bathroom4 ,he might see ,marge for a while4 ,but eventually he would filter over to ,building #bf4 ,he would go over some of the programs of the night before1 printed on the nine-and-a-half-inch-wide paper that the ,flexowriter used4 ,he would annotate and modify the listing to update the code to whatever he considered the next stage of operation4 ,maybe then he would move over to the ,model ,railroad ,club1 and he'd swap his program with someone1 checking simultaneously for good ideas and potential bugs4 ,then back to ,building #bf1 to the ,kluge ,room next to the ,,tx-#j1 to find an off-line ,flexowriter on which to update his code4 ,all the while he'd be checking to see if someone had canceled a one-hour session on the machine2 his own session was scheduled at something like two or three in the morning4 ,he'd wait in the ,kluge ,room1 or play some bridge back at the ,railroad ,club1 until the time came4 ,sitting at the console1 facing the metal racks that held the computer's transistors1 each transistor representing a location that either held or did not hold a bit of memory1 ,saunders would set up the ,flexowriter1 which would greet him with the word ,,walrus4 ,this was something ,samson had hacked1 in honor of ,lewis ,carroll's poem with the line ,the time has come1 the ,walrus said 4 4 4 ,saunders might chuckle at that as he went into the drawer for the paper tape which held the assembler program and fed that into the tape reader4 ,now the computer would be ready to assemble his program1 so he'd take the ,flexowriter tape he'd been working on and send that into the computer4 ,he'd watch the lights go on as the computer switched his code from source 7the symbolic assembly language7 to object code 7binary71 which the computer would punch out into another paper tape4 ,since that tape was in the object code that the ,,tx-#j understood1 he'd feed it in1 hoping that the program would run magnificently4 ,there would most probably be a few fellow hackers kibitzing behind him1 laughing and joking and drinking ,cokes and eating some junk food they'd extracted from the machine downstairs4 ,saunders preferred the lemon jelly wedges that the others called lemon gunkies4 ,but at four in the morning1 anything tasted good4 ,they would all watch as the program began to run1 the lights going on1 the whine from the speaker humming in high or low register depending on what was in ,bit #ad in the accumulator1 and the first thing he'd see on the ,,crt display after the program had been assembled and run was that the program had crashed4 ,so he'd reach into the drawer for the tape with the ,,flit debugger and feed ,,that into the computer4 ,the computer would then be a debugging machine1 and he'd send the program back in4 ,now he could start trying to find out where things had gone wrong1 and maybe if he was lucky he'd find out1 and change things by putting in some commands by flicking some of the switches on the console in precise order1 or hammering in some code on the ,flexowriter4 ,once things got running--and it was always incredibly satisfying when something worked1 when he'd made that roomful of transistors and wires and metal and electricity all meld together to create a precise output that he'd devised--he'd try to add the next advance to it4 ,when the hour was over--someone already itching to get on the machine after him--,saunders would be ready to spend the next few hours figuring out what the heck had made the program go belly-up4 ,the peak hour itself was tremendously intense1 but during the hours before1 and even during the hours afterward1 a hacker attained a state of pure concentration4 ,when you programmed a computer1 you had to be aware of where all the thousands of bits of information were going from one instruction to the next1 and be able to predict--and exploit--the effect of all that movement4 ,when you had all that information glued to your cerebral being1 it was almost as if your own mind had merged into the environment of the computer4 ,sometimes it took hours to build up to the point where your thoughts could contain that total picture1 and when you did get to that point1 it was such a shame to waste it that you tried to sustain it by marathon bursts1 alternatively working on the computer or poring over the code that you wrote on one of the off-line ,flexowriters in the ,kluge ,room4 ,you would sustain that concentration by wrapping around to the next day4 ,inevitably1 that frame of mind spilled over to what random shards of existence the hackers had outside of computing4 ,the knife-and-paintbrush contingent at ,,tmrc were not pleased at all by the infiltration of ,tixo-mania into the club3 they saw it as a sort of ,trojan horse for a switch in the club focus1 from railroading to computing4 ,and if you attended one of the club meetings held every ,tuesday at five-fifteen1 you could see the concern3 the hackers would exploit every possible thread of parliamentary procedure to create a meeting as convoluted as the programs they were hacking on the ,,tx-#j4 ,motions were made to make motions to make motions1 and objections ruled out of order as if they were so many computer errors4 ,a note in the minutes of the meeting on ,november #bd1 #aiei1 suggests that we frown on certain members who would do the club a lot more good by doing more ,s,p-ing and less reading ,robert's ,rules of ,order4 ,samson was one of the worst offenders1 and at one point1 an exasperated ,,tmrc member made a motion to purchase a cork for ,samson's oral diarrhea4 ,hacking parliamentary procedure was one thing1 but the logical mind-frame required for programming spilled over into more commonplace activities4 ,you could ask a hacker a question and sense his mental accumulator processing bits until he came up with a precise answer to the question you asked4 ,marge ,saunders would drive to the ,safeway every ,saturday morning in the ,volkswagen and upon her return ask her husband1 ,would you like to help me bring in the groceries8 ,bob ,saunders would reply1 ,no4 ,stunned1 ,marge would drag in the groceries herself4 ,after the same thing occurred a few times1 she exploded1 hurling curses at him and demanding to know why he said no to her question4 ,that's a stupid question to ask1 he said4 ,of course ,i won't ,,like to help you bring in the groceries4 ,if you ask me if ,i'll help you bring them in1 that's another matter4 ,it was as if ,marge had submitted a program into the ,,tx-#j1 and the program1 as programs do when the syntax is improper1 had crashed4 ,it was not until she debugged her question that ,bob ,saunders would allow it to run successfully on his own mental computer4 ,,chapter #b ,,the ,,hacker ,,ethic ,something new was coalescing around the ,,tx-#j3 a new way of life1 with a philosophy1 an ethic1 and a dream4 ,there was no one moment when it started to dawn on the ,,tx-#j 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 machine4 ,with a fervor like that of young hot-rodders fixated on souping up engines1 they came to take their almost unique surroundings for granted1 ,even as the elements of a culture were forming1 as legends began to accrue1 as their mastery of programming started to surpass any previous recorded levels of skill1 the dozen or so hackers were reluctant to acknowledge that their tiny society1 on intimate terms with the ,,tx-#j1 had been slowly and implicitly piecing together a body of concepts1 beliefs1 and mores4 ,the precepts of this revolutionary ,hacker ,ethic were not so much debated and discussed as silently agreed upon4 ,no manifestos were issued4 ,no missionaries tried to gather converts4 ,the computer did the converting1 and those who seemed to follow the ,hacker ,ethic most faithfully were people like ,samson1 ,saunders1 and ,kotok1 whose lives before ,,mit seemed to be mere preludes to that moment when they fulfilled themselves behind the console of the ,,tx-#j4 ,later there would come hackers who took the implicit ,ethic even more seriously than the ,,tx-#j hackers did1 hackers like the legendary ,greenblatt or ,gosper1 though it would be some years yet before the tenets of hackerism would be explicitly delineated4 ,still1 even in the days of the ,,tx-#j1 the planks of the platform were in place4 ,the ,hacker ,ethic3 ,,access ,,to ,,computers--,,and ,,anything ,,which ,,might ,,teach ,,you ,,something ,,about ,,the ,,way ,,the ,,world ,,works--,,should ,,be ,,unlimited ,,and ,,total4 ,,always ,,yield ,,to ,,the ,,hands-,,on ,,imperative6 ,hackers believe that essential lessons can be learned about the systems--about the world--from taking things apart1 seeing how they work1 and using this knowledge to create new and even more interesting things4 ,they resent any person1 physical barrier1 or law that tries to keep them from doing this4 ,this is especially true when a hacker wants to fix something that 7from his point of view7 is broken or needs improvement4 ,imperfect systems infuriate hackers1 whose primal instinct is to debug them4 ,this is one reason why hackers generally hate driving cars--the system of randomly programmed red lights and oddly laid out one-way streets causes delays which are so goddamned ,,unnecessary that the impulse is to rearrange signs1 open up traffic-light control boxes 4 4 4redesign the entire system4 ,in a perfect hacker world1 anyone pissed off enough to open up a control box near a traffic light and take it apart to make it work better should be perfectly welcome to make the attempt4 ,rules which prevent you from taking matters like that into your own hands are too ridiculous to even consider abiding by4 ,this attitude helped the ,model ,railroad ,club start1 on an extremely informal basis1 something called the ,midnight ,requisitioning ,committee4 ,when ,,tmrc needed a set of diodes1 or some extra relays1 to build some new feature into ,the ,system1 a few ,s,p people would wait until dark and find their way into the places where those things were kept4 ,none of the hackers1 who were as a rule scrupulously honest in other matters1 seemed to equate this with stealing4 ,a willful blindness4 ,,all ,,information ,,should ,,be ,,free4 ,if you don't have access to the information you need to improve things1 how can you fix them8 ,a free exchange of information particularly when the information was in the form of a computer program1 allowed for greater overall creativity4 ,when you were working on a machine like the ,,tx-#j1 which came with almost no software1 everyone would furiously write systems programs to make programming easier--,tools to ,make ,tools1 kept in the drawer by the console for easy access by anyone using the machine4 ,this prevented the dread1 time-wasting ritual of reinventing the wheel3 instead of everybody writing his own version of the same program1 the best version would be available to everyone1 and everyone would be free to delve into the code and improve on ,,that4 ,a world studded with feature-full programs1 bummed to the minimum1 debugged to perfection4 ,the belief1 sometimes taken unconditionally1 that information should be free was a direct tribute to the way a splendid computer1 or computer program1 works--the binary bits moving in the most straightforward1 logical path necessary to do their complex job1 ,what was a computer but something which benefited from a free flow of information8 ,if1 say1 the accumulator found itself unable to get information from the input_/output 7i_/o7 devices like the tape reader or the switches1 the whole system would collapse4 ,in the hacker viewpoint1 any system could benefit from that easy flow of information4 ,,mistrust ,,authority--,,promote ,,decentralization4 ,the best way to promote this free exchange of information is to have an open system1 something which presents no boundaries between a hacker and a piece of information or an item of equipment that he needs in his quest for knowledge1 improvement1 and time on-line4 ,the last thing you need is a bureaucracy4 ,bureaucracies1 whether corporate1 government1 or university1 are flawed systems1 dangerous in that they cannot accommodate the exploratory impulse of true hackers4 ,bureaucrats hide behind arbitrary rules 7as opposed to the logical algorithms by which machines and computer programs operate73 they invoke those rules to consolidate power1 and perceive the constructive impulse of hackers as a threat4 ,the epitome of the bureaucratic world was to be found at a very large company called ,international ,business ,machines--,,ibm4 ,the reason its computers were batch-processed ,hulking ,giants was only partially because of vacuum tube technology1 ,the real reason was that ,,ibm was a clumsy1 hulking company which did not understand the hacking impulse4 ,if ,,ibm had its way 7so the ,,tmrc hackers thought71 the world would be batch-processed1 laid out on those annoying little punch cards1 and only the most privileged of priests would be permitted to actually interact with the computer4 ,all you had to do was look at someone in the ,,ibm world1 and note the button-down white shirt1 the neatly pinned black tie1 the hair carefully held in place1 and the tray of punch cards in hand4 ,you could wander into the ,computation ,center1 where the #gjd1 the #gji1 and later the #gjij were stored--the best ,,ibm had to offer--and see the stifling orderliness1 down to the roped-off areas beyond which non-authorized people could not venture4 ,and you could compare that to the extremely informal atmosphere around the ,,tx-#j1 where grungy clothes were the norm and almost anyone could wander in4 ,now1 ,,ibm had done and would continue to do many things to advance computing4 ,by its sheer size and mighty influence1 it had made computers a permanent part of life in ,america4 ,to many people1 the words ,,ibm and computer were virtually synonymous4 ,,ibm's machines were reliable workhorses1 worthy of the trust that businessmen and scientists invested in them4 ,this was due in part to ,,ibm's conservative approach3 it would not make the most technologically advanced machines1 but would rely on proven concepts and careful1 aggressive marketing4 ,as ,,ibm's dominance of the computer field was established1 the company became an empire unto itself1 secretive and smug4 ,what really drove the hackers crazy was the attitude of the ,,ibm priests and sub-priests1 who seemed to think that ,,ibm had the only real computers1 and the rest were all trash4 ,you couldn't talk to those people--they were beyond convincing4 ,they were batch-processed people1 and it showed not only in their preference of machines1 but in their idea about the way a computation center1 and a world1 should be run4 ,those people could never understand the obvious superiority of a decentralized system1 with no one giving orders3 a system where people could follow their interests1 and if along the way they discovered a flaw in the system1 they could embark on ambitious surgery4 ,no need to get a requisition form4 just a need to get something done4 ,this antibureaucratic bent coincided neatly with the personalities of many of the hackers1 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 sport4 ,these young adults who were once outcasts found the computer a fantastic equalizer1 experiencing a feeling1 according to ,peter ,samson1 like you opened the door and walked through this grand new universe 4 4 4 ,once they passed through that door and sat behind the console of a million-dollar computer1 hackers had power4 ,so it was natural to distrust any force which might try to limit the extent of that power4 ,,hackers ,,should ,,be ,,judged ,,by ,,their ,,hacking1 ,,not ,,bogus ,,criteria ,,such ,,as ,,degrees1 ,,age1 ,,race1 ,,or ,,position4 ,the ready acceptance of twelve-year-old ,peter ,deutsch in the ,,tx-#j community 7though not by non-hacker graduate students7 was a good example4 ,likewise1 people who trotted in with seemingly impressive credentials were not taken seriously until they proved themselves at the console of a computer4 ,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 hacking1 to create new programs to admire1 to talk about that new feature in the system4 ,,you ,,can ,,create ,,art ,,and ,,beauty ,,on ,a ,,computer4 ,samson's music program was an example4 ,but to hackers1 the art of the program did not reside in the pleasing sounds emanating from the on-line speaker4 ,the code of the program held a beauty of its own4 7,samson1 though1 was particularly obscure in refusing to add comments to his source code explaining what he was doing at a given time4 ,one well-distributed program ,samson wrote went on for hundreds of assembly language instructions1 with only one comment beside an instruction which contained the number #agej4 ,the comment was ,,ripjsb1 and people racked their brains about its meaning until someone figured out that #agej was the year ,bach died1 and that ,samson had written an abbreviation for ,rest ,in ,peace ,johann ,sebastian ,bach47 ,a certain esthetic of programming style had emerged4 ,because of the limited memory space of the ,,tx-#j 7a handicap that extended to all computers of that era71 hackers came to deeply appreciate innovative techniques which allowed programs to do complicated tasks with very few instructions4 ,the shorter a program was1 the more space you had left for other programs1 and the faster a program ran4 ,sometimes when you didn't need speed or space much1 and you weren't thinking about art and beauty1 you'd hack together an ugly program1 attacking the problem with brute force methods4 ,well1 we can do this by adding twenty numbers1 ,samson might say to himself1 and it's quicker to write instructions to do that than to think out a loop in the beginning and the end to do the same job in seven or eight instructions4 ,but the latter program might be admired by fellow hackers1 and some programs were bummed to the fewest lines so artfully that the author's peers would look at it and almost melt with awe4 ,sometimes program bumming became competitive1 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 two1 or1 better yet1 rethink the whole problem and devise a new algorithm which would save a whole block of instructions4 7,an algorithm is a specific procedure which one can apply to solve a complex computer problem2 it is sort of a mathematical skeleton key47 ,this could most emphatically be done by approaching the problem from an offbeat angle that no one had ever thought of before but that in retrospect made total sense4 ,there was definitely an artistic impulse residing in those who could utilize this genius-from-,mars techniques black-magic1 visionary quality which enabled them to discard the stale outlook of the best minds on earth and come up with a totally unexpected new algorithm4 ,this happened with the decimal print routine program4 ,this was a subroutines program within a program that you could sometimes integrate into many different programs--to translate binary numbers that the computer gave you into regular decimal numbers4 ,in ,saunders' words1 this problem became the pawn's ass of programming--if you could write a decimal print routine which worked you knew enough about the computer to call yourself a programmer of sorts4 ,and if you wrote a ,,great decimal print routine1 you might be able to call yourself a hacker4 ,more than a competition1 the ultimate bumming of the decimal print routine became a sort of hacker ,holy ,grail4 ,various versions of decimal print routines had been around for some months4 ,if you were being deliberately stupid about it1 or if you were a genuine moron--an out-and-out loser--it might take you a hundred instructions to get the computer to convert machine language to decimal4 ,but any hacker worth his salt could do it in less1 and finally1 by taking the best of the programs1 bumming an instruction here and there1 the routine was diminished to about fifty instructions4 ,after that1 things got serious4 ,people would work for hours1 seeking a way to do the same thing in fewer lines of code4 ,it became more than a competition2 it was a quest4 ,for all the effort expended1 no one seemed to be able to crack the fifty-line barrier4 ,the question arose whether it was even possible to do it in less4 ,was there a point beyond which a program could not be bummed8 ,among the people puzzling with this dilemma was a fellow named ,jenson1 a tall1 silent hacker from ,maine who would sit quietly in the ,kluge ,room and scribble on printouts with the calm demeanor of a backwoodsman whittling4 ,jenson was always looking for ways to compress his programs in time and space--his code was a completely bizarre sequence of intermingled ,boolean and arithmetic functions1 often causing several different computations to occur in different sections of the same eighteen-bit word4 ,amazing things1 magical stunts4 ,before ,jenson1 there had been general agreement that the only logical algorithm for a decimal print routine would have the machine repeatedly subtracting1 using a table of the powers of ten to keep the numbers in proper digital columns4 ,jenson somehow figured that a powers-of-ten table wasn't necessary2 he came up with an algorithm that was able to convert the digits in a reverse order but1 by some digital sleight of hand1 print them out in the proper order4 ,there was a complex mathematical justification to it that was clear to the other hackers only when they saw ,jenson's program posted on a bulletin board1 his way of telling them that he had taken the decimal print routine to its limit4 ,,forty-,,six ,,instructions4 ,people would stare at the code and their jaws would drop4 ,marge ,saunders remembers the hackers being unusually quiet for days afterward4 ,we knew that was the end of it1 ,bob ,saunders later said4 ,that was ,nirvana4 ,,computers ,,can ,,change ,,your ,,life ,,for ,,the ,,better4 ,this belief was subtly manifest4 ,rarely would a hacker try to impose a view of the myriad advantages of the computer way of knowledge to an outsider4 ,yet this premise dominated the everyday behavior of the ,,tx-#j hackers1 as well as the generations of hackers that came after them4 ,surely the computer had changed ,,their lives1 enriched their lives1 given their lives focus1 made their lives adventurous4 ,it had made them masters of a certain slice of fate4 ,peter ,samson later said1 ,we did it twenty-five to thirty percent for the sake of doing it because it was something we could do and do well1 and sixty percent for the sake of having something which was in its metaphorical way alive1 our offspring1 which would do things on its own when we were finished4 ,that's the great thing about programming1 the magical appeal it has 4 4 4 ,once you fix a behavioral problem a computer or program has1 it's fixed forever1 and it is exactly an image of what you meant4 ,,like ,,aladdin',s ,,lamp1 ,,you ,,could ,,get ,,it ,,to ,,do ,,your ,,bidding4 ,surely everyone could benefit from experiencing this power4 ,surely everyone could benefit from a world based on the ,hacker ,ethic4 ,this was the implicit belief of the hackers1 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 computers4 ,this was not easily done4 ,even at such an advanced institution as ,,mit1 some professors considered a manic affinity for computers as frivolous1 even demented4 ,,tmrc hacker ,bob ,wagner once had to explain to an engineering professor what a computer was4 ,wagner experienced this clash of computer versus anti-computer even more vividly when he took a ,numerical ,analysis class in which the professor required each student to do homework using rattling1 clunky electromechanical calculators4 ,kotok was in the same class1 and both of them were appalled at the prospect of working with those lo-tech machines4 ,why should we1 they asked1 when we've got this computer8 ,so ,wagner began working on a computer program that would emulate the behavior of a calculator4 ,the idea was outrageous4 ,to some1 it was a misappropriation of valuable machine time4 ,according to the standard thinking on computers1 their time was too precious that one should only attempt things which took maximum advantage of the computer1 things that otherwise would take roomfuls of mathematicians days of mindless calculating4 ,hackers felt otherwise3 anything that seemed interesting or fun was fodder for computing--and using interactive computers1 with no one looking over your shoulder and demanding clearance for your specific project1 you could act on that belief4 ,after two or three months of tangling with intricacies of floating-point arithmetic 7necessary to allow the program to know where to place the decimal point7 on a machine that had no simple method to perform elementary multiplication1 ,wagner had written three thousand lines of code that did the job4 ,he had made a ridiculously expensive computer perform the function of a calculator that cost a thousand times less4 ,to honor this irony1 he called the program ,expensive ,desk ,calculator1 and proudly did the homework for his class on it4 ,his grade--zero4 ,you used a computer6 the professor told him4 ,this ,,can',t be right4 ,wagner didn't even bother to explain4 ,how could he convey to his teacher that the computer was making realities out of what were once incredible possibilities8 ,or that another hacker had even written a program called ,expensive ,typewriter that converted the ,,tx-#j to something you could write text on1 could process your writing in strings of characters and print it out on the ,flexowriter--could you imagine a professor accepting a classwork report ,,written ,,by ,,the ,,computer8 ,how could that professor--how could1 in fact1 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 simulate1 according to ,wagner1 strange situations which one could scarcely envision otherwise8 ,the professor would learn in time1 as would everyone1 that the world opened up by the computer was a limitless one4 ,if anyone needed further proof1 you could cite the project that ,kotok was working on in the ,computation ,center1 the chess program that bearded ,al professor ,uncle ,john ,mc,carthy1 as he was becoming known to his hacker students1 had begun on the ,,ibm #gjd4 ,even though ,kotok and the several other hackers helping him on the program had only contempt for the ,,ibm batch-processing mentality that pervaded the machine and the people around it1 they had managed to scrounge some late-night time to use it interactively1 and had been engaging in an informal battle with the systems programmers on the #gjd to see which group would be known as the biggest consumer of computer time4 ,the lead would bounce back and forth1 and the white-shirt-and-black-tie #gjd people were impressed enough to actually let ,kotok and his group touch the buttons and switches on the #gjd3 rare sensual contact with a vaunted ,,ibm beast4 ,kotok's role in bringing the chess program to life was indicative of what was to become the hacker role in ,artificial ,intelligence3 a ,heavy ,head like ,mc,carthy or like his colleague ,marvin ,minsky would begin a project or wonder aloud whether something might be possible1 and the hackers1 if it interested them1 would set about doing it4 ,the chess program had been started using ,,fortran1 one of the early computer languages4 ,computer languages look more like ,english than assembly language1 are easier to write with1 and do more things with fewer instructions2 however1 each time an instruction is given in a computer language like ,,fortran1 the computer must first translate that command into its own binary language4 ,a program called a compiler does this1 and the compiler takes up time to do its job1 as well as occupying valuable space within the computer4 ,in effect1 using a computer language puts you an extra step away from direct contact with the computer1 and hackers generally preferred assembly or1 as they called it1 machine language to less elegant1 higher-level languages like ,,fortran4 ,kotok1 though1 recognized that because of the huge amounts of numbers that would have to be crunched in a chess program1 part of the program would have to be done in ,,fortran1 and part in assembly4 ,they hacked it part by part1 with move generators1 basic data structures1 and all kinds of innovative algorithms for strategy4 ,after feeding the machine the rules for moving each piece1 they gave it some parameters by which to evaluate its position1 consider various moves1 and make the move which would advance it to the most advantageous situation4 ,kotok kept at it for years1 the program growing as ,,mit kept upgrading its ,,ibm computers1 and one memorable night a few hackers gathered to see the program make some of its first moves in a real game4 ,its opener was quite respectable1 but after eight or so exchanges there was real trouble1 with the computer about to be checkmated4 ,everybody wondered how the computer would react4 ,it too a while 7everyone knew that during those pauses the computer was actually thinking1 if your idea of thinking included mechanically considering various moves1 evaluating them1 rejecting most1 and using a predefined set of parameters to ultimately make a choice74 ,finally1 the computer moved a pawn two squares forward--illegally jumping over another piece4 ,a bug6 ,but a clever one--it got the computer out of check4 ,maybe the program was figuring out some new algorithm with which to conquer chess4 ,at other universities1 professors were making public proclamations that computers would never be able to beat a human being in chess4 ,hackers knew better4 ,they would be the ones who would guide computers to greater heights than anyone expected4 ,and the hackers1 by fruitful1 meaningful association with the computer1 would be foremost among the beneficiaries4 ,but they would not be the only beneficiaries4 ,everyone could gain something by the use of thinking computers in an intellectually automated world4 ,and wouldn't everyone benefit even more by approaching the world with the same inquisitive intensity1 skepticism toward bureaucracy1 openness to creativity1 unselfishness in sharing accomplishments1 urge to make improvements1 and desire to build as those who followed the ,hacker ,ethic8 ,by accepting others on the same unprejudiced basis by which computers accepted anyone who entered code into a ,flexowriter8 ,wouldn't we benefit if we learned from computers the means of creating a perfect system8 ,if ,,everyone could interact with computers with the same innocent1 productive1 creative impulse that hackers did1 the ,hacker ,ethic might spread through society like a benevolent ripple1 and computers would indeed change the world for the better4 ,in the monastic confines of the ,massachusetts ,institute of ,technology1 people had the freedom to live out this dream--the hacker dream4 ,no one dared suggest that the dream might spread4 ,instead1 people set about building1 right there at ,,mit1 a hacker ,xanadu the likes of which might never be duplicated4 ,hackers1 ,heroes of the ,computer ,revolution1 by ,steven ,levy 7,c7#aihd by ,steven ,levy