Reading 02: Game Hackers

Steven Levy opens “The Brotherhood” by claiming that “the Hacker Ethic was changing, even as it spread throughout the country” (243). Money, power, and greed tend to corrupt, and while reading, I thought Ken Williams’ greed and unconventional way of embracing the Hacker Ethic would cause me to believe that Ken Williams was a phony hacker, rather than a true hacker. While I do not approve of the way Ken Williams acted most of the time, I think that Ken Williams was (ironically) the most relatable hacker described by Levy, as he was described by Levy as having an “inclination toward self-deprecation and…fierce determination that showed up even as he was backed into a corner” (Ken Williams becomes less relatable as the story progresses, though) (231). Sure, the majority of the hackers described in the book were failing the college courses they were enrolled in, but Williams was the first character who we got to see struggle with a programming class; he didn’t have the almost-instantaneous magical programming capabilities that a lot of the true and hardware hackers seemed to have.

Typically, I am pretty optimistic that anything is achievable with a little bit of gusto and hard work, but the original Hacker Ethic cannot truly and fully survive in a world of commercial and proprietary software — for one thing, commercial and proprietary software implies that information is no longer free. The spirit of “hackerism” cannot survive the success of the software industry without the spirit of “hackerism” working with the software industry — take the hackers and programmers in Silicon Valley, for example. As we touched upon in class, being a programmer with “love for [computing] in [your] heart” and “hacker perfectionism in [your] soul,” will allow you to produce higher quality products, but I do not necessarily believe that it is the only way to produce quality products. You can be a “professional programmer, … the goal-oriented … responsible engineer” and still produce high-quality software; you do not necessarily have to be passionate about the software or product you are producing to procure a quality product. Sure, Ken and Roberta Williams seemingly blow my argument out of the water, as they built amazing pieces of technology that they were passionate about — but, I think that Ken was more motivated by greed than by the “hacker perfectionism” and a “love for computing” — Ken does not fully embody the Hacker Ethic in the same manner in which the true hackers did. While I do not like greed, greed is what motivated Ken Williams to become passionate about computing. I feel that this may be true for a lot of, but not all, other individuals who are into computer programming; it is a lucrative field that is seemingly boundless, and many of us recognize that and are waiting to capitalize on it. So, maybe I was wrong when I said that Ken Williams became less relatable as the story progressed. Ken Williams is more relatable than I am willing to admit — he achieved what many of us can only hope to achieve one day.