Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Where Are The 'Hackers' Now? from NPR Podcast Science Friday

In his 1984 book, Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, author Steven Levy profiled some of the personalities whose work brought PCs to the people, including Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Levy discusses his book, recently reissued, and hacker ethics in the Internet age.
Download the podcast here. See also: Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government Saving Privacy in the Digital Age, The Perfect Thing: How the iPod Shuffles Commerce, Culture, and Coolness, In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives, On The Path



MIT's periodical, "Technology Review," recently said this about the anniversary edition of the book: "In Hackers, Captain Crunch shows up primarily as an adjunct to the nascent Apple computer company, where he was briefly employed to create a circuit board that, when connected to a phone, could enable an Apple II to reproduce his feats of phone hacking. Fearing legal entanglements, the board was never released, and Captain Crunch didn't last long at the fledgling company, but the "blue box" on which the board was based became the workhorse of the phone hacker "phreaking" community." See that TR article here. Pair the Hackers book with the movie, "Pirates of Silicon Valley." Note: "Hackers," starring Angelina Jolie and Jonny Lee Miller, is not as relevant.

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