hackers

I have heard a alot of stories about the history of computers and all the people involved in it. I have even come across several movies that talk about how computers evolved and all that but i have never come across anything as detailed in computer history as this book called hackers by Steven Levy.


hackers takes you on a journey back into time and all the way back into the future of computer hardware and software. To be specific it starts with how computers and the people who loved them related way back in the fifties. With such details as some rarely talked about or known hackers, their family backgrounds, their interests and relationships (not with the opposite sex but with computers and fellow hackers) one gets a true feeling and understanding of what it took to hack computers at that time.

Anyone who presently hacks computer hardware or software should read this book, trust me, you feel good and hack even better when you read this ;-).

the book has a total of 483 pages with four (4) sections and twenty (20) chapters as presented below:

Part One. TRUE HACKERS
CAMBRIDGE: The Fifties and Sixties
Chapter 1
The Tech Model Railroad Club
Chapter 2
The Hacker Ethic
Chapter 3
Spacewar
Chapter 4
Greenblatt and Gosper
Chapter 5
The Midnight Computer Wiring Society
Chapter 6
Winners and Losers
Chapter 7
Life

Part Two. HARDWARE HACKERS
NORTHERN CALIFORNIA: The Seventies
Chapter 8
Revolt in 2100
Chapter 9
Every Man a God
Chapter 10
The Homebrew Computer Club
Chapter 11
Tiny BASIC
Chapter 12
Woz
Chapter 13
Secrets
Part Three. GAME HACKERS
THE SIERRAS: The Eighties
Chapter 14
The Wizard and the Princess
Chapter 15
The Brotherhood
Chapter 16
The Third Generation
Chapter 17
Summer Camp
Chapter 18
Frogger

Chapter 19
Applefest
Chapter 20
Wizard vs. Wizards
Part Four. THE LAST OF THE TRUE HACKERS
CAMBRIDGE: 1983
The Last of the True Hackers
Afterword: Ten Years After
Afterword: 2010
Notes
Acknowledgments .
Index

Reading this book was fun and very enlightening, though i feel the author should have focused a little more on recent hacker history.