Steven Levy revisits some of the people he profiled in his book Hackers, back in the Pre-Cambrian period of the geek revolution:
“It’s funny in a way”, says Bill Gates, relaxing in an armchair in his office. “When I was young, I didn’t know any old people. When we did the microprocessor revolution, there was nobody old, nobody. It’s weird how old this industry has become.” The Microsoft cofounder and I, a couple of fiftysomething codgers, are following up on an interview I had with a tousle-headed Gates more than a quarter century ago. I was trying to capture what I thought was the red-hot core of the then-burgeoning computer revolution — the scarily obsessive, absurdly brainy, and endlessly inventive people known as hackers. Back then, Gates had just pulled off a deal to supply his DOS operating system to IBM. His name was not yet a household word; even Word was not yet a household word. I would interview Gates many times over the years, but that first conversation was special. I saw his passion for computers as a matter of historic import. Gates himself saw my reverence as an intriguing novelty. But by then I was convinced that I was documenting a movement that would affect everybody.
The book I was writing, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, came out just over 25 years ago, in the waning days of 1984. My editor had urged me to be ambitious, and so I shot high, crafting a 450-page narrative in three parts, making the case that hackers — brilliant programmers who discovered worlds of possibility within the coded confines of a computer — were the key players in a sweeping digital transformation.
I hadn’t expected to reach that conclusion. When I embarked on my project, I thought of hackers as little more than an interesting subculture. But as I researched them, I found that their playfulness, as well as their blithe disregard for what others said was impossible, led to the breakthroughs that would define the computing experience for millions of people.
I must have read Hackers during my first or second semester in college, as I tried to figure out how to get out of the series of dead-end jobs I’d had since leaving school. I found strong echoes of many of the characters Levy portrayed in the people I encountered in my first few “high tech” jobs, although I don’t think any of them have managed to become billionaires yet.
Sort of related: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=1925
Comment by Lickmuffin — April 21, 2010 @ 10:02
Interestingly, ESR is one of the hacker elite most likely to be identified as such by non-hackers (according to a study I just made up).
Comment by Nicholas — April 21, 2010 @ 13:21