------- d-i-n-a EVENTS -------

at FORUM STADTPARK - Graz
February, 28th - March, 1st 2003

A [HI]STORY[-TELLING] OF HACKER CULTURES

· Year Zero (!)

· 1967
PDP-10 - Hacker ethic - ARPAnet

· The 1970s
Community Memory Group - Felsenstein - Birth of computer underground - Blue Box and Apple

· The 1970s
The rise of Unix

· The 80s
Phrack - Free Software Foundation - 2600

· The 90s
The "hacker crackdown" and after - The Intel 386 chip - Linux - DeCSS

The Rise of Unix

1970: This was the year that a Bell Labs hacker named Ken Thompson invented Unix.

Another hacker named Dennis Ritchie invented a new language called "C" for use under Thompson's embryonic Unix. Like Unix, C was designed to be pleasant, unconstraining, and flexible.

Traditionally, operating systems had been written in tight assembler to extract the absolute highest efficiency possible out of their host machines.

Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1974 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.

This had never been done before, and the implications werevery important. If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them. No longer would users have to pay for complete new designs of software every time a machine went obsolete. Hackers could carry around software toolkits between different machines, rather than having to re-invent the equivalents of fire and the wheel every time.

By 1980, it had spread to a large number of university and research computing sites, and thousands of hackers considered it home.The workhorse machines of the early Unix culture were the PDP-11 and its descendant, the VAX.

Vax

First LANs and WANs. Unix even had its own networking, of sorts--Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP): low-speed and unreliable, but cheap. Any two Unix machines could exchange point-to-point electronic mail over ordinary phone lines; this capability was built into the system, not an optional extra.

The PDP-10 hackers tended to consider the Unix crowd a bunch of upstarts, using tools that looked ridiculously primitive when set against the baroque, lovely complexities of LISP and ITS. "Stone knives and bearskins!" they muttered.

1975: Altair 8800. The pioneering microcomputer that galvanized hardware hackers.

Altair 8800

Advances came with almost unbelievable rapidity in the years that followed. The potential of microcomputers was clear, and attracted yet another generation of bright young hackers. Their language was BASIC, so primitive that PDP-10 partisans and Unix aficionados both considered it beyond contempt.

1977: Bill Gates is arrested for reckless driving.

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	T.A.Z. Take_Away_Zone #1		ART IN THE AGE OF HACKING	at FORUM STADTPARK - Graz February, 28th - March, 1st 2003
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A [HI]STORY[-TELLING] OF HACKER CULTURES · Year Zero (!) · 1967 PDP-10 - Hacker ethic - ARPAnet · The 1970s Community Memory Group - Felsenstein - Birth of computer underground - Blue Box and Apple · The 1970s The rise of Unix · The 80s Phrack - Free Software Foundation - 2600 · The 90s The "hacker crackdown" and after - The Intel 386 chip - Linux - DeCSS		The Rise of Unix 1970: This was the year that a Bell Labs hacker named Ken Thompson invented Unix. Another hacker named Dennis Ritchie invented a new language called "C" for use under Thompson's embryonic Unix. Like Unix, C was designed to be pleasant, unconstraining, and flexible. Traditionally, operating systems had been written in tight assembler to extract the absolute highest efficiency possible out of their host machines. Thompson and Ritchie were among the first to realize that hardware and compiler technology had become good enough that an entire operating system could be written in C, and by 1974 the whole environment had been successfully ported to several machines of different types.


		This had never been done before, and the implications werevery important. If Unix could present the same face, the same capabilities, on machines of many different types, it could serve as a common software environment for all of them. No longer would users have to pay for complete new designs of software every time a machine went obsolete. Hackers could carry around software toolkits between different machines, rather than having to re-invent the equivalents of fire and the wheel every time.
		By 1980, it had spread to a large number of university and research computing sites, and thousands of hackers considered it home.The workhorse machines of the early Unix culture were the PDP-11 and its descendant, the VAX. Vax First LANs and WANs. Unix even had its own networking, of sorts--Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol (UUCP): low-speed and unreliable, but cheap. Any two Unix machines could exchange point-to-point electronic mail over ordinary phone lines; this capability was built into the system, not an optional extra. The PDP-10 hackers tended to consider the Unix crowd a bunch of upstarts, using tools that looked ridiculously primitive when set against the baroque, lovely complexities of LISP and ITS. "Stone knives and bearskins!" they muttered. 1975: Altair 8800. The pioneering microcomputer that galvanized hardware hackers. Altair 8800 Advances came with almost unbelievable rapidity in the years that followed. The potential of microcomputers was clear, and attracted yet another generation of bright young hackers. Their language was BASIC, so primitive that PDP-10 partisans and Unix aficionados both considered it beyond contempt. 1977: Bill Gates is arrested for reckless driving. < previous \| next >