[SIGCIS-Members] CACM essay about Levy's 1984 book _Hackers_

[Brian Randell]

Hi Tom:

I really liked your essay on Levy's book.  As I was reading it my thoughts strayed to Stuart Brand's 'Whole Earth Catalogue' - and then was delighted to see that your essay did make reference to it. Might I encourage you to consider writing an essay just on and around Brand's splendid book - I acquired a copy when it first came out - and persuaded the local academic bookshop to stock it for our computer science students . I still treasure my first edition.

Cheers

Brian


—
 
School of Computing, Newcastle University, 1 Science Square, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE4 5TG
EMAIL = Brian.Randell at ncl.ac.uk   PHONE = +44 191 208 7923
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On 26/03/2021, 04:02, "Members on behalf of thomas.haigh at gmail.com" <members-bounces at lists.sigcis.org on behalf of thomas.haigh at gmail.com> wrote:

    Hello SIGCIS,

   CACM just published part two of my trilogy on classic accounts of IT work. This once considers Steven Levy’s 1984 classic_ Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution_. It’s called “When Hackers Were Heroes” and is available at https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251341-when-hackers-were-heroes/fulltext. The book is the source of the much-quoted “hacker ethic” but it’s richer, stranger, and more deeply rooted in its time than you might expect if all you’ve seen is the bullet point version.
 
   The first part focused on Tracy Kidder’s _The Soul of a New Machine_ (https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3436249) while part 3, due out in the summer, has the working title “Women’s Lives in Code.” It will explore both Ellen Ullman’s wonderful _Close the Machine_ and the more recent (but set in roughly the same era) TV series _Halt and Catch Fire_. In case you are curious about that show, here’s a preview: you should watch it but probably best to skip the first season which is a misbegotten attempt to make a _Mad Men_ derivative based around Jobs and Wozniak archetypes (except they work at what’s basically Compaq and hire a Lisbeth Salander type for gender balance). The show reboots for the second seasons, improves dramatically, and finishes up, as critics have noted, being more like _Six Feet Under_ than _Mad Men_.
 
   While I am here, I should also point out another article of potential interest in the current issue: “Roots of ‘Program’ Revisited” by Lisebeth De Mol and Maarten Bullynck. https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/4/251342-roots-of-program-revisited/fulltext
 
   Back in February, CACM published a condensed version of Donald Knuth’s 2014 talk “Let’s Not Dumb Down the History of Computer Science.” https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2021/2/250078-lets-not-dumb-down-the-history-of-computer-science/fulltext This gave me the feeling of being in a Christopher Nolan movie, as I’d already responded to it in the same venue in 2015, as “The Tears of Donald Knuth.” https://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2015/1/181633-the-tears-of-donald-knuth/fulltext Six years after the response, the original arrives.
 
   Best wishes,

   Tom
    Best wishes,

    Tom