Hacker culture

The hacker culture is a subculture of individuals who enjoy the intellectual challenge of creatively overcoming and circumventing limitations of systems to achieve novel and clever outcomes. The act of engaging in activities (such as programming or other media) in a spirit of playfulness and exploration is termed "hacking". However, the defining characteristic of a hacker is not the activities performed themselves (e.g. programming), but the manner in which it is done: hacking entails some form of excellence, for example exploring the limits of what is possible, thereby doing something exciting and meaningful. Activities of playful cleverness can be said to have "hack value" and are termed "hacks" (examples include pranks at MIT intended to demonstrate technical aptitude and cleverness). The hacker culture originally emerged in academia in the 1960s around the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)'s Tech Model Railroad Club (TMRC) and MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.

Hacker Culture

Hacker Culture is a cultural criticism book written by Douglas Thomas that deals with hacker ethics and hackers.

Reception

Publishers Weekly reviewed Hacker Culture as "an intelligent and approachable book on one of the most widely discussed and least understood subcultures in recent decades."

San Francisco Chronicle reviewed Hacker Culture as "an unusually balanced history of the computer underground and its sensational representation in movies and newspapers."

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