When Hackers Were Heroes

cacm.acm.org

87 pointslamby5 comments

This reads like a book report for "Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution," which is a strange thing to publish in a magazine in 2021.

I don't think it hurts to be occasionally reminded of the origins of hacker culture. Its a shame there isn't an equivalent book report style article about the demo scene, or the hard landing of AI and symbolics, or the rise and fall of Parcplace, Digitalk and VisualAge and the falling out of favour on Wall street.

History won't repeat but it will rhyme and there are plenty of failed business models to study in there, or simply clever bits of software to be discussed, or even just crazy stories to be amused by.

> the hard landing of AI and symbolics

This is a topic I find myself periodically doing casual research on, and I agree -- I think it would be an interesting topic for a book. A friend's mother-in-law worked for Symbolics (or maybe Lisp Machines Inc) doing marketing. I've chatted with her a little bit about it, and it sounds like a neat era, worthy of more attention.

It could at least have been a book report on Crypto https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/332850/crypto-by-st... , which is perhaps even better and a lot less well-known.

My account is 13yrs old and I still come here near daily since I found it.

Weird to think about.

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