The Investor's Shelf — one book
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
About Steven Levy
American technology journalist and editor at large at Wired who wrote histories of hacker culture, Apple, Google and Facebook.
Hackers documented the MIT and Homebrew programming culture of the 1950s through the 1980s and named the ethic that later shaped open source and startup engineering. In the Plex and Facebook report from inside those companies on how their products, ranking systems and business models were actually built.
Where it sits in the reference 1
Journalists
Who recommended it 4
Marc Andreessenreported
Superbook reading list
“Steven Levy's 1984 history of the first hacker generation shaped Andreessen's self-conception of what software builders are. He has recommended it as the founding myth of the culture he operates inside — the origin story of why information wants to be free and why the best builders ignore institutional authority.”
Paul Grahamreported
Superbook reading list
“Graham has cited Levy's account of the original hacker culture as one of the most accurate descriptions of what it feels like to be obsessed with programming. The ethic Levy documents — following curiosity wherever it leads, sharing code freely, resisting hierarchy — maps closely onto what Graham has said he looks for in founders.”
Sam Altmanreported
Superbook reading list
“Levy's history of the early hacker culture at MIT and Stanford is a book Altman has recommended to people who want to understand the cultural substrate of the tech industry. It documents a particular ethos — openness, meritocracy, computers as tools for expanding human capability — that still shapes how people in Silicon Valley see themselves.”
Stewart Brandreported
Superbook reading list
“Steven Levy's account of hacker culture from MIT to the Homebrew Computer Club covers the same milieu Brand helped create. He appears in the book and wrote about this world in his own work. For readers who want the social history behind the machines, this is the primary source.”
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