Reading 02: Money Talks

After reading this section, I naturally started to compare the True Hackers and the Hardware Hackers. And while they both fall under that common title of "hackers," I think there are several key differences between the groups. Perhaps I am just being pessimistic in the wake of a horrific Notre Dame loss, but to me the true hacker seemed much more authentic and committed to hacking. While the Hardware Hackers also heavily pursued hacking, there were definitely moments where they abandoned their predecessors’ lasting legacy: The Hacker Ethic.

A central idea of Part Two is that the Hardware Hackers were committed to spreading hacking and computing to the masses. The medium for this discourse was the Homebrew Computer Club, whose core tenets were rooted in the Hacker Ethic. But despite this, I couldn’t help but feel as if the Homebrew Computer Club was the first step towards abandoning the Hacker Ethic. The True Hackers despised bureaucracy and while the Homebrew Computer Club was not inherently bureaucratic, I cannot help but feel like the process of formulating a club and putting a name on it is not something that the True Hackers would do. Maybe I am overthinking it, but I would mark this as a defining difference between the True and Hardware Hackers. That being said, the Homebrew Computer Club was immensely successful, and while I am saying that the creation of a club feels bureaucratic, the club definitely embodied the Hacker Ethic through their open discourse. 

I believe the central difference between the True and Hardware hackers is their inaction/action of monetizing hacking. The True Hackers would have never tried to monetize hacking; for them, all the joy came from hacking itself. The Hardware Hackers however, most notably Bill Gates and Steve Jobs, had an alternative approach to this question of monetization. As a result, they experienced widespread success and laid the foundation for computing in the 21st century. But then this leads us to the overarching question for this week’s reading: is compromising the ideals of the hacker ethic worth having a larger impact on the world?

That is obviously an extremely loaded question. On the one hand, I would imagine there might be some reputational damage associated with monetizing hacking. Not to mention, Gates and Jobs became the founders of Big Tech companies Microsoft and Apple, which are corporations I am sure the True Hackers would fight against (like IBM). However, I do think it is important to recognize all the good that came from spreading (and monetizing) computing. While the True Hackers innovated at an amazing pace, the innovation was spatially confined to the MIT computer room. The advantage of spreading computing to the masses through the personal computer gave anyone who could afford it the opportunity to contribute to the hacking community. And not to mention, while Big Tech certainly has flaws, Apple and Microsoft have been the leaders of innovating new technology, where much of that is used for good. And while Felsenstein and Lipkin are on opposite sides of whether tech is used for good, it is undeniable that some good (and some bad) has emerged thanks to the Hardware Hackers’ willingness to abandon parts of the Hacker Ethic to give computing to the people.