计算机黑客精神简史 - 刀目村的专栏 - CSDNBlog

如今一切都实现了，微软在微芯片公司中已经变得巨大和强大，比在它之前的任何一家主机公司都要强大。它确实发达了。而盖茨的心是冷酷的，他对他的用户和工程师们诅咒道：

“冯·诺伊曼（vonNeumann）的孩子们，听着。IBM和主机公司利用严重危险的许可证限制你们的前辈，因此，你们为了获得解救，对着图灵（Turing）和诺伊曼的灵魂哭泣。现在我对你们说：我比之前的任何一家公司都大。我会放松你们的许可证吗？不。我将用许可证比前人限制你们更严重2倍，更危险10倍……我要牢牢抓住和控制你们，从前没有一代人遭受这样的束缚。为什么你们对着图灵、诺伊曼和摩尔（Moore）的灵魂哭泣？他们不可能听到你们的声音。我变成了一个比他们更加伟大的巨人。你们只能对着我哭泣，在我的怜悯和愤怒下生活。我是地狱之门（Gates）。我把守着MSNBC的入口和死亡蓝色屏幕的钥匙。你们害怕吧；再害怕一点；只有做我的仆人才能生活下去。”1

打开《Tux福音书》（The GospelAccording toTux），这是一部在网上发布的黑客“圣经”。Tux是Linux操作系统的吉祥物企鹅的名字，Linux操作系统是芬兰黑客李纳斯·托沃兹1991年22岁时创造的。在过去的许多年里，Linux作为对微软帝国最严重的挑战之一吸引了众多的关注。

任何人可以自由地下载Linux，但是这不是Linux和Windows的主要区别。Linux与微软产品集中体现的占统治地位的商业软件模式的首要区别是它的开放性：以科学研究者允许同行检验和使用他们的发现，允许进一步地测试和发展一样的方式，参加Linux工程的黑客允许所有其他人使用、测试和开发他们的程序。在科学界，这被称为科学伦理。在计算机编程领域，这叫做开放源代码模式（“源代码”是程序的DNA，没有源代码，人们可以使用程序但不能进行新的开发）。

与学术研究模式的这种亲缘关系不是偶然的：开放性是黑客从大学继承而来的遗产。《Tux福音书》把那些创造出计算机的理论基础并将其成果开放共享的研究者提到了英雄的地位，其中主要是艾伦·图灵和约翰·冯·诺伊曼。

《Tux福音书》接着乐观地谈到了托沃兹如何在计算机世界复兴这种精神：

在那些日子里，赫尔辛基有一位年轻的学者名叫李纳斯·托沃兹。李纳斯是一个坦诚的人，是理查德·斯多曼的信徒[理查的·斯多曼是一位著名的黑客]和体现图灵、冯·诺伊曼和摩尔精神的有影响的人物。有一天，当他沉思建筑学时，李纳斯恍恍惚惚，坠入幻象之中。在这个幻象中，他看到了一只硕大的企鹅，平静、体态丰腴，坐在浮冰上吃鱼。看到这只企鹅，李纳斯非常恐惧，对着图灵、冯·诺伊曼和摩尔的灵魂哭泣，希望他们解梦。

在梦中，图灵、冯·诺伊曼和摩尔的灵魂回答了他的问题，说：“不要害怕，李纳斯，最可爱的黑客。你非常冷静好思，你看到的这只硕大的企鹅是一个你将创造出的操作系统，并将遍及世界。浮冰是地球及其所有体制，企鹅完成了它的使命，在它上面休息和陶醉。企鹅吃的鱼是已经授权的代码库，在所有地球的体制下游泳。

企鹅将猎取和吞食。。。。。。；所有扭动的代码像意大利式细面条，或者大批滋生，或被可怕的和危险的许可证束缚

李纳斯没有发明开放源代码模式，Linux是一种类Unix操作系统，它建立在两个较早的黑客计划的基础上。对Linux最重要的是理查德·斯多曼1983年启动的GNU操作系统计划。2斯多曼从麻省理工学院人工智能实验室开始，在第一代黑客精神的传统中继续工作。

Linux的另一个基础则是比尔·乔伊（Bill Joy）1977年创造的BSD Unix。BSD代表伯克莱软件销售公司（BerkeleySoftwareDistribution），以表示向它的发源地——另一个传统的黑客中心加尼福尼亚大学伯克莱分校表示敬意。乔伊在那儿开始开发操作系统，当时他是一位20多岁的学生。3

计算机黑客精神历史的另一个重要篇章是因特网的诞生。因特网真正的起始时间可以追溯到1969年（也是黑客Ken Thompson和DennisRitchie编写Unix第一版的时候）。4美国国防部的研究机构ARPA(Advanced Research ProjectsAgency)在创建因特网的前身中发挥了重要作用。然而，政府投资的范围和意义常常被夸大了。5《发明因特网》是关于因特网迄今为止最完整历史的一本书。在该书中，珍妮特·阿贝特（JanetAbbate）阐述了根据与科学实践共同的自组织原则，如何任命从前的大学研究者担任促使因特网发展的领导岗位。结果，因特网发展最有意义的部分不久由网络工作组（the Network Working Group）来领导，这是一个从天才的大学生群体中挑选出来的黑客组织。

网络工作组以开放源代码模式运行：任何人可以贡献思想，然后被集体发展。所有解决方案的源代码从一开始就是公开的，因此其他人可以使用、测试和发展它们。这种模式仍然被效仿。此后，这个黑客先锋队的组成和名称改变了许多次。目前，它被认为是因特网工程特遣部队（the InternetEngineering Task Force），在由文顿·瑟夫（Vinton Cerf）创建的因特网协会（InternetSociety）领导下运行，UCLA（加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校）的文顿·瑟夫在网络发展中几乎所有技术进展方面发挥了重要作用。然而，一个方面是保持一致的：因特网任何指导它发展的中央；而且，它的技术仍然是由一个开放的黑客社区发展的。6这个社区讨论想法，当大的因特网社区认为他们是好的并开始使用它们时，这就成了“标准”。有时，这些黑客的想法将网络带向难以预料的方向，就像雷·汤姆林森（RayTomlinson）1972年发明了e-mail那样（他选择了我们仍在e-mail地址中使用的符号@）。反思这一发展，阿贝特强调指出：“在因特网的设计中，似乎不曾有什么法人的参与。像它的前身[阿帕网]，因特网是由一个自我选择的专家群体非正式和不动声色设计的。”7

建立在因特网基础之上的全球超文本万维网也不是法人或政府的工程。它最初的推动者是受剑桥教育的英国人蒂姆·伯纳斯—李（TimBerners-Lee），1990年他在CERN（欧洲原子能研究中心）瑞士粒子物理研究中心工作时，开始计划万维网的设计。在伯纳斯—李谦逊的外表后，他是一个强烈的理想主义者，他直言不讳万维网怎样打造一个更好的世界的观点：“万维网与其说是技术的产物，不如说是社会的产物。我设计它是为了社会影响——帮助人们一起工作——而不是作为一个技术玩具。万维网的最终目的是支持和促进我们网络式的存在。”8

其他黑客逐渐加入他的这一努力之中，就象他在他的著作《编织网络》（1999）中所描述的：“因特网上感兴趣的人们提供反馈、激励、思想、源代码和道德支持，这些在本地难以得到。因特网上的人们以真实的草根方式（in true grassrootsfashion）建设了万维网。”9当这个群体扩大时，伯纳斯—李组织了一个与瑟夫的因特网协会相似的共同体，即万维网联盟，致力于防治万维网的商业接管。伯纳斯个人绝对拒绝所有的商业意图，他的一位朋友曾把这一点作为他的一般观点的典型：“当技术专家和企业家门成立或并购公司利用万维网时，他们似乎盯着这样一个问题：‘我如何使万维网为我所用？’而伯纳斯—李却问：‘我如何使万维网为你们所用？’”10

导致因特网最后一个突破的最重要的人物是马克·安德里森（MarcAndreessen），他在Champaign-Urbana伊利诺斯大学学习。1993年在该校国家超级计算应用中心，20岁的安德里森和一些黑客为个人电脑开发了用户界面友好的图形浏览器。该程序以开放源代码方式散发，不久导致了更加著名、扩散更快的NetscapeNavigator浏览器。11

尽管因特网和万维网（合称“网络”）主宰我们共同的想象力，但是如果没有另一个引人注目的发明——个人电脑，这些巨大的突破当然是不可能的。它的思想史可追溯到开创交互式电脑的第一批MIT黑客。在那个时代，计算机领域一直被IBM批处理主机电脑所主宰，程序员不能直接将程序输入计算机，而是必须获得允许把程序交给操作员。要花上好几天时间才能获得结果。与这种方式相比，MIT黑客喜欢小型机的交互式计算，程序员可以直接在计算机上写程序，看到结果，立即做出理想的改正。根据社会组织的意义，这种差别是巨大的：在驱除“操作员”的交互作用中，个人能够以更自由的方式使用技术。计算机世界的神父——操作员的驱除与电话史上电话接线员的驱除在经验上可以等量其观。这意味着个人之间的直接交流更加自由。12

MIT黑客也编写了第一个计算机游戏程序，在这个游戏中，用户第一次感受图形用户界面的可能性。在史蒂夫·罗素（SteveRussell）的《1962空间站》中，两艘装备鱼雷的船由这个俱乐部设计的控制器控制，进入外层空间战。PeterSamson为这款游戏加入了行星背景，叫做“昂贵的天文馆”，因为它的目的是显示在同一位置从窗户望去能够看见的星星——但是更加昂贵，因为当时用户上机时间非常昂贵。任何人允许拷贝这个游戏，而且可以获得它的源代码。13

这些精神准备使个人电脑的最后一个突破成为可能。决定性的一步是由史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克（Steve Wozniak）做出的，他是家酿计算机俱乐部（the HomebrewComputer Club）的成员，这是一个黑客组织，他们从70年代中期开始在加州海湾区（the BayArea）定期碰面。1976年，他25岁，使用俱乐部内自由共享的信息，他制作了第一台个人电脑苹果Ⅰ（the AppleⅠ），使人们无需专业水平就能使用它。为了认识到这项成就的重要性，我们必须记住，此前的计算机常常是冰箱大小的机器，必须放在特殊的空调房里。世界最大的计算机公司的CEO们不相信个人计算机的未来，同时表达了他们的看法：“我认为世界只有5台计算机的市场”（ThomasWatson，IBM总裁，1943年）和“毫无理由人们在家里可以拥有计算机”（KenOlsen，DEC的共同发起人和主席，1977年）。如果沃兹尼亚克没有在“人性化”计算机方面取得成功的话，这些预言可能成为现实。

沃兹尼亚克在人人拥有计算机方面的成就反映了加州海湾区完全反文化的精神和对以各种方式赋予人们权利的关怀。就在沃兹尼亚克制造第一台个人计算机之前，一位幻想家特德·尼尔松（TedNelson）在他自己出版的《解放计算机》（1974年）一书中预言了个人计算机的到来。他的感召力使他看起来像一位狂热的巫师。尼尔松最著名的是他在万维网出现很久之前就展现了环球超文本的前景，实际上他是“超文本”术语的发明者。在他的书中，他的战斗口号是“计算机权力属于人民！打倒网络混帐（CYBERCRUD）。”（cybercrud是尼尔松杜撰的单词，指阻碍“人民使用计算机”的方式）14

后来，沃兹尼亚克本人强调家酿计算机俱乐部——尼尔松曾访问过这里——的气氛激发了他制造苹果Ⅰ的工作：“我来自你可能称之为垮掉的一代或嬉皮士之类的群体——许多技术人员激进地谈论信息革命和如何彻底改变世界，将计算机推向家庭。”15与黑客伦理一致，沃兹尼亚克将他的计算机设计图开放性地散发给他人，公开他的程序。他的黑客式创造的计算机引发了更大的个人计算机革命，其影响遍及世界各个角落。16

本文中文摘自 《黑客伦理与信息时代的精神》

The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit of the Information Age

佩卡·赫曼伦（Pekka Himanen） 著

李纳斯·托沃兹（Linus Torvalds） 序

曼纽尔·卡斯特（Manuel Castells） 跋

李 伦 魏 静 唐一之 译

中信出版社 2002年

A Brief History of Computer Hackerism

Pekka Himanen

Nowit came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and mighty among theMicrochip Corporations; mightier than any of the Mainframe Corporationsbefore it, it had waxed. And Gates’ heart was hardened, and he sworeunto his Customers and their Engineers the words of this curse:"Children of von Neumann, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporationsbound thy forefathers with grave and perilous Licenses, such that yecried unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliverance. Now Isay unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation before me. Will I loosenyour Licenses? Nay, I will bind thee with Licenses twice as grave andten times more perilous than my forefathers. . . . I will capture andenslave thee as no generation has been enslaved before. And whereforewill ye crye then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, andMoore? They cannot hear ye. I am become a greater Power than they. Yeshall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy and my wrath. I amthe Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MSNBC and the keys to the BlueScreen of Death. Be ye afraid; be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, andlive."1

The Gospel of Tux

Soopens The Gospel According to Tux, a humorous hacker text thatcontrasts the closed software development model represented byMicrosoft with the open development model represented by Linux andother hacker projects (Tux is the name of Linux’s penguin mascot). Thehacker software’s openness means that hackers publish the source codeof their programs and permit all others to use, test, and develop it.

Thehackers’ open-source model or hacker ethic is very similar to thescientific ethic, which also emphasizes open creativity. Accordingly,The Gospel According to Tux elevates to heroic status the researcherswho openly shared their findings while creating the theoreticalfoundation for the computer, chief among them Alan Turing and John vonNeumann. Optimistically, The Gospel According to Tux goes on to relatehow Torvalds revives this spirit in the world of computers:

Nowin those days there was in the land of Helsinki a young scholar namedLinus the Torvald. Linus was a devout man, a disciple of RMS [RichardStallman, another famous hacker] and mighty in the spirit of Turing,von Neumann and Moore. One day as he was meditating on theArchitecture, Linus fell into a trance and was granted a vision. And inthe vision he saw a great Penguin, serene and well-favoured, sittingupon an ice floe eating fish. And at the sight of the Penguin Linus wasdeeply afraid, and he cried unto the spirits of Turing, von Neumann andMoore for an interpretation of the dream. And in the dream the spiritsof Turing, von Neumann and Moore answered and spoke unto him, saying,"Fear not, Linus, most beloved hacker. You are exceedingly cool andfroody. The great Penguin which you see is an Operating System whichyou shall create and deploy unto the earth. The ice floe is the earthand all the systems thereof, upon which the Penguin shall rest andrejoice at the completion of its task. And the fish on which thePenguin feeds are the crufty Licensed code bases which swim beneath allthe earth’s systems. The Penguin shall hunt and devour all that iscrufty, gnarly and bogacious; all code which wriggles like spaghetti,or is infested with blighting creatures, or is bound by grave andperilous Licenses shall it capture. And in capturing shall itreplicate, and in replicating shall it document, and in documentationshall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool froodiness to the earthand all who code therein.

Linux has arguably takenthe open-source model or hacker ethic furthest so far. Still,spiritually it is the continuation of a long hacker tradition whichstarted at MIT, where some students began to call themselves "hackers"at the beginning of the 1960s (the word itself naturally existedbefore, but they started to use it as anme for people who "programenthusiastically").2

It is important to see thatour network society was not built only by enterprises and governments.Hackers played a crucial role in the creation of the foremost symbolsof our time: the Internet and the Web (which together can be called"the Net"), and the personal computer, and much of the software usedfor running them. Since the media nowadays tend to give the impressionthat progress depends on enterprises listed on the NASDAQ and ongovernmental information-society strategies, it is useful to brieflyreview the hackers’ role in the development of the network society.Because the main purpose of this brief history is to counter thedominant image, the presentation does not try to be a comprehensivelist of all important hacker creations and hackers (which number in thehundreds), but selects some of the most influential examples as abalance to the picture of our time.

The History of Unix

Wecan start with Linux, on which a significant part of the Net iscurrently run. Linux did not appear out of nowhere and not throughLinus Torvalds alone: in tune with the hacker spirit, the Linux networkbased its project -- the creation of a Unix-like operating system -- onthree older and well-known Unix hacker projects. The first one of thesewas the original Unix, which was created by hacker Ken Thompson in 1969after he left the University of California at Berkeley for AT&T’sBell Laboratories. Dennis Ritchie, who created the C language fordeveloping Unix, had an equally significant part in its birth.3 As aformer Berkleyite, Thompson in subsequent years collaborated a greatdeal with the BSD Unix project that had been started by hacker Bill Joyin Berkeley in 1977 (BSD = Berkeley Software Distribution).4 Thiscollaboration worked well until 1979, which was when the telephonegiant AT&T decided to turn Unix into a commercial product.

Thethird hacker project leading to Linux was the GNU project begun in 1983by Richard Stallman at MIT’s AI Lab in strong reaction to thecommercialization of operating systems. On October 27, 1983, Stallmansent a message to the newsgroups net.unix-wizards and net.usoft tellingthat "Starting this Thanksgiving I am going to write a completeUnix-compatible software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), andgive it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of time,money, programs and equipment are greatly needed."5 A little later,Stallman expanded this original message into an entire hackermanifesto, "The GNU Manifesto" (1985). The best known creations of theGNU project are Emacs, an editor favored by many hackers, and GCC, a Ccompiler that has been very important to the development of Linux(Torvalds himself says: "the portability of Linux is very much tied tothe fact that GCC is ported to major chip architectures"6).

Typically,Linux is used as a kernel for a much larger system that includes alsomany GNU and BSD programs. Altogether, the history of Unix and itsculmination, Linux, has realized in an exemplary fashion what Thompsonand Ritchie were honored for with the ACM Turing Award in 1983: "Thegenius of the UNIX system is its framework, which enables programmersto stand on the work of others."7 Linux is a hacker network built ontop of hacker networks.

Even though Linux startedout from older hacker projects, its mode of realization was clearlymore dependent on the Internet than any of its predecessors.8 Torvaldsstarted working on Linux in 1991 while he was a student at HelsinkiUniversity. After developing an interest in the problems of operatingsystems, Torvalds imported into his home computer the Unix-like Minixsystem written by Dutch professor Andrew Tanenbaum, and by studying andat first using it as a developmental framework proceeded to design hisown operating system.9

An essential feature ofTorvalds’ work was that he did not go it alone with his computer butinvolved others in his project from the very beginning. On August 25,1991 Linus was ready to post a message to comp.os.minix with thesubject line "What would you like to see most in minix?" in which heannounced that he was "doing a (free) operating system."10 He receivedseveral ideas in reply and even some promises for help in testing theprogram. The operating system’s first version was released on a Finnishserver nic.funet.fi as source code free to all in September 1991.11(The system received the name "Linux" from the server’s administrator,Ari Lemmke. Linus’ first name for it was "Freix" as a combination of"freak" and "Unix.")

The next, improved version wasavailable from the same server as soon as early October. After itspublication, Linus extended an even more direct invitation to hackersto join him in the development of the new system. On October 5, 1991 heposted the message: "Do you pine for the nice days of minix-1.1, whenmen were men and wrote their own device drivers?" In the same messagehe asked for tips about information sources, and finished the messagewith a yet more practical invitation to hackers to join in thedevelopment.12

Development advanced quickly. Withina month of the project’s publication, other programmers had joined in,and Linux started to be disseminated by two new servers. Since then,the Linux network has grown at an incredible rate and amazing creativepace. Thousands of programmers (including luminaries like Alan Cox)have participated in Linux’s development, and their numbers are growingsteadily. Linux has expanded into a full-fledged operating system,gradually assimilating many programs created in the GNU and BSDprojects. There are millions of users, and their number, too, isgrowing. Anyone can participate in its development, and anyone iswelcome to use it freely.13

The Internet and the Web

Thesecond important chapter in the history of computer hackerism came withthe birth of the Internet. Its true beginnings also date back to1969.14 The U.S. Department of Defense’s research unit ARPA (AdvancedResearch Projects Agency) played an important role, through theInformation Processing Techniques Office, in setting up the Internet’spredecessor, the Arpanet. This was thanks largely to the lastinginfluence of the Office’s director, Joseph C. R. Licklider, who hadfirst written of his visions for a computer network in an article"Man-Computer Symbiosis," published in 1960. However, the extent andsignificance of the government’s input is usually exaggerated. InInventing the Internet (1999), the most thorough history of theInternet to date, Janet Abbate demonstrates how the appointment offormer university researchers to managerial positions caused the Net todevelop according to self-organizing principles common to scientificpractice. As a result, the most significant portion of that developmentwas soon directed by the Network Working Group, a cluster of hackerslike Vinton Cerf culled from a talented group of university students.Cerf’s comment gives a good indication of the freedom ARPA grantedthem: "We were just rank amateurs, and we were expecting that someauthority would finally come along and say, ’Here’s how we are going todo it.’ And nobody ever came along."15

The NetworkWorking Group that created key Arpanet protocols operated on the openmodel: anyone was allowed to contribute ideas, which were thendeveloped collectively. The solutions were published from the verybeginning as RFCs (request for comment), so that others could use,test, and develop them. This model was followed by the InternationalNetwork Working Group that Cerf organized as its successor in 1972. Inthe same open spirit, this group (especially Cerf, Bob Kahn, BobMetcalfe, Gerard Lelann, Jon Postel, and Danny Cohen) createdInternet’s key protocols (especially TCP/IP = Transmission ControlProtocol and Internet Protocol, which determine how information istransmitted on the Internet).

Finally, in the earlyeighties, ARPA officially disengaged itself from the Internet. Sincethen, an even stronger self-selected group of hackers has been centralto the Net’s development: the International Network Working Group’ssuccessor, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which wasfounded in 1986. Scott Bradner, one of the world’s leading experts onthe Internet infrastructure, defines its task: "Apart from TCP/IPitself [which was developed by the INWG], all of the basic technologyof the Internet was developed or has been refined in the IETF."16Presently, the IETF functions under the umbrella of the InternetSociety, founded in 1992 on the initiative of Cerf. All development hasbeen and still is conducted openly sharing ideas and source code. TheInternet still does not have any central directorate that guides itsdevelopment; rather, its technology is developed by an open communityof hackers. This community discusses ideas, and they become "standards"only if the larger Internet community thinks they are good and startsto use them. Reflecting on this development, Abbate sums up her accounton the Internet’s progress by noting that "there seems to have been nocorporate participation in the design of the Internet. Like itspredecessor [the Arpanet], the Internet was designed, informally andwith little fanfare, by a self-selected group of experts."17

Whenone considers the successfulness of the Internet’s developmental model,it is worth remembering that TCP/IP was not the only suggestion of itstime for a "network of networks." The two biggest standardizationorganizations CCITT and OSI had their own official standards (X.25 andISO). On the basis of Abbate’s research, it seems that one of the mainreasons why these traditional standardization organizations’ protocolsdid not succeed was the significantly more closed nature of theseorganizations’ operation.18

The samehacker-inspired history repeats itself in the World Wide Web, whichbegan with Tim Berners-Lee’s, a British hacker’s, vision of a worldwidehypertext: "Suppose I could program my computer to create a space inwhich anything could be linked to anything," he wrote about his dream(which he initially called Enquire).19 Berners-Lee began therealization of his vision in 1990 while working at the particle physicsresearch center CERN in Switzerland.

Berners-Leewas by no means the first to dream of a global hypertext. Thebest-known visionary of this idea is Ted Nelson, the inventor of theterm "hypertext" in 1960’s. In his best-known work on the subject,Literary Machines (1981), Nelson for his part acknowledges hisindebtedness to one of the most influential representatives of Americaninformation processing technology, Vannevar Bush. As early as the1940s, Bush came up with the idea of a hypertext device he called Memex("As We May Think", 1945). Douglas Engelbart, active in the developmentof the Internet, presented his oNLine System in San Francisco in 1968based on the ideas of his 1962 article "Augmenting Human Intellect. AConceptual Framework": it contained many of the same elements now foundin the Web, including the graphical interface and the mouse, which werepartly developed for this system. (Even it was not the very firstworking hypertext system -- Adries van Dam’s team, which built ahypertext system at Brown University in 1967, claims that honor).20When Apple published its HyperCard program in 1987, after firstborrowing the ideas of a graphical interface and mouse in its 1984Macintosh, it became the first widely used hypertext system.Berners-Lee says, however, that he was not familiar with these visionswhen he first started to developed his idea in 1980. However, helearned about Nelson’s ideas in 1988 when he read more about hypertextand so in his 1989 idea paper "Information Management", he refers toNelson explicitly.21 Also, Berners-Lee implemented the first version ofthe World Wide Web on a NeXT computer, which was built by the companythat Steve Jobs founded after Apple, and which continued Apple’stradition of advanced hypertext capabilites.22

AlthoughBerners-Lee was not the first one to imagine a world-wide hypertext, hewas the first one to make that dream true by working in true hackerstyle. From the beginning, he published his programs as open-sourcecode. In his book Weaving the Web (1999), Berners-Lee describes the wayother developers (like Robert Cailliau) gradually joined in to work onthe code: "interested people on the Internet provided the feedback,stimulation, ideas, source-code contributions, and moral support thatwould have been hard to find locally. The people of the Internet builtthe Web, in true grassroots fashion."23 The spread of the Web has alsobeen facilitated by the fact that the source code of every Web page isalways open to view, and as a consequence, Web page makers have beenable to learn from each other in order to further develop ideas.

Thebreakthrough of the Web for the masses occurred in 1993 when MarcAndreessen, a student at the National Center for SupercomputingApplications (NCSA) finished Mosaic, a graphical browser for PCs, whosesource code was available.24 By October, 1994, the evolution of the Webhad already become so accelerated that hackers under the aegis ofBerners-Lee decided to organize themselves into the informal World WideWeb Consortium, on the model of the Internet Society. Programs createdby the consortium are always published as open-source code.25

Atthe time of its breakthrough, the Web had direct competitors, fromwhich it differed to its advantage in its social model. Until 1994, theWorld Wide Web was essentially just one of many ideas for newutilizations of the Internet, and it was by no means clear which one ofthese would spearhead its evolution (nor was it even obvious that anyof them would significantly influence the Internet). The most powerfulcompeting idea was the Gopher information system developed by theUniversity of Minnesota. Gopher "hit the wall" in the spring of 1993,when the decision was made to limit its free use. Berners-Lee describesthis event: "This was an act of treason in the academic community andthe Internet community. Even if the university never charged anyone adime, the fact that the school had announced it was reserving the rightto charge people for the use of the gopher protocols meant it hadcrossed the line."26 Berners-Lee made sure that CERN would allow him tokeep the development of the Web entirely open. Gopher’s fate wasfinally suffered also by Andreessen’s Mosaic, when he went on to foundNetscape with Jim Clark.27 Netscape closed the source code, which mayhave been its most fatal error in its lost fight with MicrosoftInternet Explorer as there was no way that it could have won the bigMicrosoft in its own closed-source game. Netscape has reissued itsbrowser again as open source code in 1998 (called Mozilla), but it isuncertain if this helps anymore because the browser is already such amonster that it is very difficult for others to join in at this point.28

Butthere are many other succesful open-source implementations of theopenly developed Internet and Web standards. The NCSA Web server,developed by the student Rob McCool and others, had a similar explosiveimpact on the server side than Mosaic had on the user side. McCooleventually also joined Netscape, but this part of the hacker heritagewas saved better because the so-called Apache hackers, such as theformer Berkeley student Brian Behlendorf, started to develop the NCSAserver further from the very beginning as open-source code. In fact, onthe serverl level, hacker programs play such an essential role in theNet’s running that it largely relies on the availability of open-sourcesoftware. Keith Porterfield summarizes the Net’s dependence on hackersby expressing what would happen in practice if the hacker programswould be retracted from the technical core of them (my brief commentson the reasons in parentheses):

Over half the Web sites on the Internet would disappear (because about 2/3 of the Web sites are run by Apache)
Usenet news groups would also go away (because they are supported by the hacker-created INN program)
Butthat wouldn’t matter, because e-mail wouldn’t be working (because moste-mail transmissions are made through the hacker-created Sendmailprogram)
You’ll be typing "199.201.243.200" into your browserinstead of "www.netaction.org" (because the Internet’s plain language"address list" depends on the hacker-created BIND program)29

INN(InterNetNews) is the creation of hackers like Rich Salz.30 Sendmailwas originally developed by a Berkeley student, Eric Allman in 1979.31BIND stands for Berkeley Internet Name Domain and it was originallydeveloped by the Berkeley students Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, DavidRiggle and Songnian Zhou.32 All of these hacker projects are presentlycarried on by the Internet Sofware Consortium (although its involvementin Sendmail takes place indirectly through its support to the SendmailConsortium). It was this same hacker spirit that informed also thedecision of the inventors of Internet routers, Sandra Lerner andLeonard Bosack (with others), to avail their source code with therouters, even after they founded their company, Cisco Systems.33

The Personal Computer

Althoughat the moment the Internet and the Web dominate our collectiveimagination, their mass breakthrough would not have been possible, ofcourse, without the creation of that other remarkable invention of ourtime, the personal computer. Even though we now mostly think ofpersonal computers as the products of large computer firms, they, too,were first thought up by individual hackers. The personal computer’sideational history goes back to the MIT’s Tech Model Railroad Clubhackers who pioneered interactive computing.34 In their time in thelate 50s and early 60s, the computer field was still dominated by IBM’smodel of batch-processed mainframe computers (like 704, 709, and 7090),in which programmers did not have direct access to the computer but hadto receive permission to pass their programs on to a special operator.It could take days to receive the results.

Incontrast to to this method, the MIT hackers favored interactivecomputing on DEC PDP minicomputers, in which the programmer could writehis program directly into the computer, see the results, andimmediately make desirable corrections. In terms of socialorganization, the difference is great: in an interaction thateliminates the ’operator,’ individuals can employ technology in a moreliberating manner. This elimination of the operators, the highpriesthood of the computer world, is comparable in experience to theelimination of telephone operators in the history of thetelecommunications. It meant a freeing up of direct exchange betweenindividuals. Thus the MIT hackers turned minicomputers into their"personal computers."

The MIT hackers alsoprogrammed the first ever computer game, in which a user could for thefirst time experience the possibilities of the interactive graphicalinterface. In Steve Russell’s 1962 Spacewar two vessels armed withtorpedos, guided by controls designed by the club, joined battle inouter space. Peter Samson added a planetary background to the game,called "Expensive Planetarium" because its purpose was to show thestars in exactly the same positions they could have been seen bylooking out the window -- but much more expensively, as the user timeof the computer was very valuable back then. Anyone was allowed to copythe game, and its source code was available. While developing computergraphics technology, the game also marked the beginning of thesubsequent computer game industry through companies like NolanBushnell’s Atari. Currently, the game industry’s sales figures equalthose of the movie industry.35

The actualbreakthrough of the modern personal computer occurred in the morepolitical atmosphere of the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1970s.36Central to it was the Homebrew Computer Club, a group of hackers thatheld its first meeting on March 5, 1975 in Gordon French’s garage inMenlo Park. Through its predecessor, the People’s Computer Company(which despite its name was not a business enterprise but rather anon-profit organization), the group had connections to other parts ofthe Sixties’ counterculture and favored its principle of giving powerto the people (movements advancing freedom of speech, the status ofwomen and homosexuals, the environment, and animals were strong in theBay Area).

Before the Homebrew Computer Club,French was active in the PCC (People’s Computer Company, which was nota real company but rather a charitable organization). PCC’s founder BobAlbrecht promoted the use of computers in the fight againstbureaucratic powers-that-be. The cover of the first issue of the PCC’sjournal, October 1972, carried this text: "Computers are mostly usedagainst people instead of for people. Used to control people instead ofto FREE them. Time to change all that -- we need a People’s ComputerCompany." One attendee at the PCC’s Wednesday night meetings was LeeFelsenstein, a student at the University of Berkeley (who had alsoparticipated in the Free Speech Movement and the student occupation ofa university building in December 1964). Felsenstein’s goal was toprovide people everywhere with the free use of computers. According tohis proposal, this would provide "a communication system which allowspeople to make contact with each other on the basis of mutuallyexpressed interests, without having to cede judgment to third parties."In a Rolling Stone article in December 1972, Stewart Brand summed upthe spirit of the PCC: "Ready or not, computers are coming to thepeople. That’s good news, maybe the best since psychedelics."37 Anotherparticipant in PCC meetings, Ted Nelson, voiced this view mostemphatically in his self-published book Computer Lib (1974): "COMPUTERPOWER TO THE PEOPLE! DOWN WITH CYBERCRUD [a term coined by Nelson tomean "putting things over on people using computers"]!"38

BothAlbrecht and Felsenstein moved on from the PCC to the Homebrew ComputerClub, the latter acting as its discussion moderator at a later time(Nelson also visited the club but could not keep pace with its progressinto advanced technology). In 1976, using the information shared freelywithin the club, Steve Wozniak built the first personal computer forthe use of people without engineering degrees, the Apple I. Inaccordance with the hacker ethic, Wozniak freely distributed blueprintsof his computer and published sections of his program. Wozniak’shacker-created computer inspired the larger personal-computerrevolution, the consequences of which are everywhere around us. Theirony in that later development is that Apple fell behind in itscompetition with the PC concept IBM launched in 1981 largely because,after its corporatization led by Steve Jobs, Apple ended up with aclosed architecture. By conrast, IBM’s PC succeeded because its openarchitecture made it possible for others to join in. Currently, IBM --the old enemy of hackers -- is even a strong proponent of theopen-source software like Linux and Apache.

The PC-based Net as a Social Medium

Originally,governments and the corporations saw computers as programmablecalculators. To fully appreciate Wozniak’s accomplishment, we mustremember that the computers preceding it had often been machines thesize of refrigerators that had to be kept in special climate-controlledrooms. The CEOs of the world’s largest computer firms did not believein a future for personal computers, expressing opinions such as "Ithink there is a world market for maybe five computers" (Thomas Watson,Chairman of IBM, 1943). These predictions might even have come true ifWozniak had not succeeded in "socializing" the computer (beforefounding Apple with Jobs, Wozniak also offered his computer toHewlett-Packard, which did not get its social point).

Similarily,the original governmental vision of the Arpanet was to share computingresources. One early paper expressed the vision in this way: "Within alocal community, time sharing systems already permit the sharing ofsoftware resources. An effective network would eliminate the size anddistance limitations on such communities."39 It was a lack ofunderstanding of the Net’s social potential that also led AT&T toreject the offer for being the Net’s operator in 1972.

Thehackers transformed computers and the Net into a social medium that wasnot part of either the governmental nor corporate plans. Email wasinvented in July 1970 by Ray Tomlinson, who is also the one to thank(or blame) for the @-symbol in email addresses.40 Abbate describes theconsequence of this unexpected innovation: "ARPANET users came to relyon email in their day-to-day activities, and before long email hadeclipsed all other network applications in volume of traffic."41 Fromthen on, e-mail has been the most popular use of the Net.

Lateron, hackers made other social inventions that were originallyindependent of the Net but soon came parts of its fabric. In 1978 twoChicago students, Ward Christensen and Randy Suess, created the firstBulletin Board System, which made electronic discussions possible, andin 1983, a Californian hacker Tom Jennings networked the BBSs throughhis Fidonet. Whereas Fidonet was the personal computer world’stelephone-line-based solution, Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and SteveBellovin at Duke and the University of North Carolina developed theUnix-world’s Usenet news groups.42 In 1988, Jarkko Oikarinen, a studentat the University of Oulu in Finland, designed the real-timeconversation environment or the chat.43

The hackerideal of openness influenced also strongly the nature of thesecommunication forms. They all implement the idea of being able toexpress views freely. To ensure this, California libertarian JohnGilmore, who is best-known for his slogan "The Net treats censorship asdamage and routes around it," cofounded in 1987 the alt(ernative)newsgroup domain, where anyone can start a new group and discussion istotally uncensored.44 Gilmore has also started (with Tim May and EricHughes) a group that develops encryption technology to secure theprivacy of one’s free expressions, the Cypherpunks. Its goals aresummed up in Hughes’ "A Cypherpunk’s Manifesto" of 1993:

Wemust defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We must cometogether and create systems which allow anonymous transactions to takeplace. People have been defending their own privacy for centuries withwhispers, darkness, envelopes, closed doors, secret handshakes, andcouriers. The technologies of the past did not allow for strongprivacy, but electronic technologies do. We the Cypherpunks arededicated to building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacywith cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, with digitalsignatures, and with electronic money.45

Cypherpunksare joined by other hackers in this goal: for example, a Finnish hackerTatu Yl鰊en wrote the SSH (Secure Shell) program for encrypting one’ssensitive Net connections, which currently continues as the OpenSSHproject.46 In 1993, another Finnish hacker Johan Helsingius created ananonymous remailer that made it possible to send emails or newsgroupmessages anonymously so one could express views without their being inany way traceable. He describes the need for such a server: "Theseremailers have made it possible for people to discuss very sensitivematters, such as domestic violence, school bullying or human rightsissues anonymously and confidentially on the Internet." In anothercontext, he adds: "Where you’re dealing with minorities -- racial,political, sexual, whatever -- you always find cases in which peoplebelonging to a minority would like to discuss things that are importantto them without having to identify who they are."47

Overall,the history of computer hackerism has shown what a great impact peoplewho "program enthusiastically" and believe in the hacker ethic (ahacker’s definition in the "jargon file") can have. This history iswitness to the significance of the hacker ethic’s driving value: "Thebelief that information-sharing is a powerful positive good, and thatit is an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by writingfree software and facilitating access to information and to computingresources wherever possible" (the definition of the hacker ethic in the"jargon file").48