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发信人: RDF.bbs@bbs.sjtu.edu.cn (布告·法官·打手), 信区: Linux
标  题: 计算机黑客精神简史
发信站: 饮水思源 (Thu Mar 13 14:43:51 2003)
转信站: SZU!news.tiaozhan.com!news.neu.edu.cn!SJTU

计算机黑客精神简史（中英双语）
作者：Himanen  2003-3-12 11:49:46
出处：博客中国(Blogchina.com)      原始出处：中信出版社

如今一切都实现了，微软在微芯片公司中已经变得巨大和强大，比在
它之前的任何一家主机公司都要强大。它确实发达了。而盖茨的心是
冷酷的，他对他的用户和工程师们诅咒道：
“冯·诺伊曼（von Neumann）的孩子们，听着。IBM和主机公司利用
严重危险的许可证限制你们的前辈，因此，你们为了获得解救，对着
图灵（Turing）和诺伊曼的灵魂哭泣。现在我对你们说：我比之前的
任何一家公司都大。我会放松你们的许可证吗？不。我将用许可证比
前人限制你们更严重2倍，更危险10倍……我要牢牢抓住和控制你们，
从前没有一代人遭受这样的束缚。为什么你们对着图灵、诺伊曼和摩
尔（Moore）的灵魂哭泣？他们不可能听到你们的声音。我变成了一个
比他们更加伟大的巨人。你们只能对着我哭泣，在我的怜悯和愤怒下
生活。我是地狱之门（Gates）。我把守着MSNBC的入口和死亡蓝色屏
幕的钥匙。你们害怕吧；再害怕一点；只有做我的仆人才能生活下去
。”1
打开《Tux福音书》（The Gospel According to Tux），这是一部在
网上发布的黑客“圣经”。Tux是Linux操作系统的吉祥物企鹅的名字
，Linux操作系统是芬兰黑客李纳斯·托沃兹1991年22岁时创造的。在
过去的许多年里，Linux作为对微软帝国最严重的挑战之一吸引了众多
的关注。
任何人可以自由地下载Linux，但是这不是Linux和Windows的主要区别
。Linux与微软产品集中体现的占统治地位的商业软件模式的首要区别
是它的开放性：以科学研究者允许同行检验和使用他们的发现，允许
进一步地测试和发展一样的方式，参加Linux工程的黑客允许所有其他
人使用、测试和开发他们的程序。在科学界，这被称为科学伦理。在
计算机编程领域，这叫做开放源代码模式（“源代码”是程序的DNA，
没有源代码，人们可以使用程序但不能进行新的开发）。
与学术研究模式的这种亲缘关系不是偶然的：开放性是黑客从大学继
承而来的遗产。《Tux福音书》把那些创造出计算机的理论基础并将其
成果开放共享的研究者提到了英雄的地位，其中主要是艾伦·图灵和
约翰·冯·诺伊曼。
《Tux福音书》接着乐观地谈到了托沃兹如何在计算机世界复兴这种精
神：
在那些日子里，赫尔辛基有一位年轻的学者名叫李纳斯·托沃兹。李
纳斯是一个坦诚的人，是理查德·斯多曼的信徒[理查的·斯多曼是一
位著名的黑客]和体现图灵、冯·诺伊曼和摩尔精神的有影响的人物。
有一天，当他沉思建筑学时，李纳斯恍恍惚惚，坠入幻象之中。在这
个幻象中，他看到了一只硕大的企鹅，平静、体态丰腴，坐在浮冰上
吃鱼。看到这只企鹅，李纳斯非常恐惧，对着图灵、冯·诺伊曼和摩
尔的灵魂哭泣，希望他们解梦。
在梦中，图灵、冯·诺伊曼和摩尔的灵魂回答了他的问题，说：“不
要害怕，李纳斯，最可爱的黑客。你非常冷静好思，你看到的这只硕
大的企鹅是一个你将创造出的操作系统，并将遍及世界。浮冰是地球
及其所有体制，企鹅完成了它的使命，在它上面休息和陶醉。企鹅吃
的鱼是已经授权的代码库，在所有地球的体制下游泳。
企鹅将猎取和吞食。。。。。。；所有扭动的代码像意大利式细面条
，或者大批滋生，或被可怕的和危险的许可证束缚
李纳斯没有发明开放源代码模式，Linux是一种类Unix操作系统，它建
立在两个较早的黑客计划的基础上。对Linux最重要的是理查德·斯多
曼1983年启动的GNU操作系统计划。2斯多曼从麻省理工学院人工智能
实验室开始，在第一代黑客精神的传统中继续工作。
Linux的另一个基础则是比尔·乔伊（Bill Joy）1977年创造的BSD U
nix。BSD代表伯克莱软件销售公司（Berkeley Software Distributi
on），以表示向它的发源地——另一个传统的黑客中心加尼福尼亚大
学伯克莱分校表示敬意。乔伊在那儿开始开发操作系统，当时他是一
位20多岁的学生。3
计算机黑客精神历史的另一个重要篇章是因特网的诞生。因特网真正
的起始时间可以追溯到1969年（也是黑客Ken Thompson和Dennis Rit
chie编写Unix第一版的时候）。4美国国防部的研究机构ARPA(Advanc
ed Research Projects Agency)在创建因特网的前身中发挥了重要作
用。然而，政府投资的范围和意义常常被夸大了。5《发明因特网》是
关于因特网迄今为止最完整历史的一本书。在该书中，珍妮特·阿贝
特（Janet Abbate）阐述了根据与科学实践共同的自组织原则，如何
任命从前的大学研究者担任促使因特网发展的领导岗位。结果，因特
网发展最有意义的部分不久由网络工作组（the Network Working Gr
oup）来领导，这是一个从天才的大学生群体中挑选出来的黑客组织。

网络工作组以开放源代码模式运行：任何人可以贡献思想，然后被集
体发展。所有解决方案的源代码从一开始就是公开的，因此其他人可
以使用、测试和发展它们。这种模式仍然被效仿。此后，这个黑客先
锋队的组成和名称改变了许多次。目前，它被认为是因特网工程特遣
部队（the Internet Engineering Task Force），在由文顿·瑟夫（
Vinton Cerf）创建的因特网协会（Internet Society）领导下运行，
UCLA（加利福尼亚大学洛杉矶分校）的文顿·瑟夫在网络发展中几乎
所有技术进展方面发挥了重要作用。然而，一个方面是保持一致的：
因特网任何指导它发展的中央；而且，它的技术仍然是由一个开放的
黑客社区发展的。6这个社区讨论想法，当大的因特网社区认为他们是
好的并开始使用它们时，这就成了“标准”。有时，这些黑客的想法
将网络带向难以预料的方向，就像雷·汤姆林森（Ray Tomlinson）1
972年发明了e-mail那样（他选择了我们仍在e-mail地址中使用的符号
@）。反思这一发展，阿贝特强调指出：“在因特网的设计中，似乎不
曾有什么法人的参与。像它的前身[阿帕网]，因特网是由一个自我选
择的专家群体非正式和不动声色设计的。”7
建立在因特网基础之上的全球超文本万维网也不是法人或政府的工程
。它最初的推动者是受剑桥教育的英国人蒂姆·伯纳斯—李（Tim Be
rners-Lee），1990年他在CERN（欧洲原子能研究中心）瑞士粒子物理
研究中心工作时，开始计划万维网的设计。在伯纳斯—李谦逊的外表
后，他是一个强烈的理想主义者，他直言不讳万维网怎样打造一个更
好的世界的观点：“万维网与其说是技术的产物，不如说是社会的产
物。我设计它是为了社会影响——帮助人们一起工作——而不是作为
一个技术玩具。万维网的最终目的是支持和促进我们网络式的存在。
”8
其他黑客逐渐加入他的这一努力之中，就象他在他的著作《编织网络
》（1999）中所描述的：“因特网上感兴趣的人们提供反馈、激励、
思想、源代码和道德支持，这些在本地难以得到。因特网上的人们以
真实的草根方式（in true grassroots fashion）建设了万维网。”
9当这个群体扩大时，伯纳斯—李组织了一个与瑟夫的因特网协会相似
的共同体，即万维网联盟，致力于防治万维网的商业接管。伯纳斯个
人绝对拒绝所有的商业意图，他的一位朋友曾把这一点作为他的一般
观点的典型：“当技术专家和企业家门成立或并购公司利用万维网时
，他们似乎盯着这样一个问题：‘我如何使万维网为我所用？’而伯
纳斯—李却问：‘我如何使万维网为你们所用？’”10
导致因特网最后一个突破的最重要的人物是马克·安德里森（Marc A
ndreessen），他在Champaign-Urbana伊利诺斯大学学习。1993年在该
校国家超级计算应用中心，20岁的安德里森和一些黑客为个人电脑开
发了用户界面友好的图形浏览器。该程序以开放源代码方式散发，不
久导致了更加著名、扩散更快的Netscape Navigator浏览器。11
尽管因特网和万维网（合称“网络”）主宰我们共同的想象力，但是
如果没有另一个引人注目的发明——个人电脑，这些巨大的突破当然
是不可能的。它的思想史可追溯到开创交互式电脑的第一批MIT黑客。
在那个时代，计算机领域一直被IBM批处理主机电脑所主宰，程序员不
能直接将程序输入计算机，而是必须获得允许把程序交给操作员。要
花上好几天时间才能获得结果。与这种方式相比，MIT黑客喜欢小型机
的交互式计算，程序员可以直接在计算机上写程序，看到结果，立即
做出理想的改正。根据社会组织的意义，这种差别是巨大的：在驱除
“操作员”的交互作用中，个人能够以更自由的方式使用技术。计算
机世界的神父——操作员的驱除与电话史上电话接线员的驱除在经验
上可以等量其观。这意味着个人之间的直接交流更加自由。12
MIT黑客也编写了第一个计算机游戏程序，在这个游戏中，用户第一次
感受图形用户界面的可能性。在史蒂夫·罗素（Steve Russell）的《
1962空间站》中，两艘装备鱼雷的船由这个俱乐部设计的控制器控制
，进入外层空间战。Peter Samson为这款游戏加入了行星背景，叫做
“昂贵的天文馆”，因为它的目的是显示在同一位置从窗户望去能够
看见的星星——但是更加昂贵，因为当时用户上机时间非常昂贵。任
何人允许拷贝这个游戏，而且可以获得它的源代码。13
这些精神准备使个人电脑的最后一个突破成为可能。决定性的一步是
由史蒂夫·沃兹尼亚克（Steve Wozniak）做出的，他是家酿计算机俱
乐部（the Homebrew Computer Club）的成员，这是一个黑客组织，
他们从70年代中期开始在加州海湾区（the Bay Area）定期碰面。19
76年，他25岁，使用俱乐部内自由共享的信息，他制作了第一台个人
电脑苹果Ⅰ（the Apple Ⅰ），使人们无需专业水平就能使用它。为
了认识到这项成就的重要性，我们必须记住，此前的计算机常常是冰
箱大小的机器，必须放在特殊的空调房里。世界最大的计算机公司的
CEO们不相信个人计算机的未来，同时表达了他们的看法：“我认为世
界只有5台计算机的市场”（Thomas Watson，IBM总裁，1943年）和“
毫无理由人们在家里可以拥有计算机”（Ken Olsen，DEC的共同发起
人和主席，1977年）。如果沃兹尼亚克没有在“人性化”计算机方面
取得成功的话，这些预言可能成为现实。
沃兹尼亚克在人人拥有计算机方面的成就反映了加州海湾区完全反文
化的精神和对以各种方式赋予人们权利的关怀。就在沃兹尼亚克制造
第一台个人计算机之前，一位幻想家特德·尼尔松（Ted Nelson）在
他自己出版的《解放计算机》（1974年）一书中预言了个人计算机的
到来。他的感召力使他看起来像一位狂热的巫师。尼尔松最著名的是
他在万维网出现很久之前就展现了环球超文本的前景，实际上他是“
超文本”术语的发明者。在他的书中，他的战斗口号是“计算机权力
属于人民！打倒网络混帐（CYBERCRUD）。”（cybercrud是尼尔松杜
撰的单词，指阻碍“人民使用计算机”的方式）14
后来，沃兹尼亚克本人强调家酿计算机俱乐部——尼尔松曾访问过这
里——的气氛激发了他制造苹果Ⅰ的工作：“我来自你可能称之为垮
掉的一代或嬉皮士之类的群体——许多技术人员激进地谈论信息革命
和如何彻底改变世界，将计算机推向家庭。”15与黑客伦理一致，沃
兹尼亚克将他的计算机设计图开放性地散发给他人，公开他的程序。
他的黑客式创造的计算机引发了更大的个人计算机革命，其影响遍及
世界各个角落。16

本文中文摘自《黑客伦理与信息时代的精神》
                            The Hacker Ethic and the Spirit
of the Information Age
佩卡·赫曼伦（Pekka Himanen）著
李纳斯·托沃兹（Linus Torvalds）序
曼纽尔·卡斯特（Manuel Castells）跋
李伦  魏静  唐一之译
              中信出版社 2002年
A Brief History of Computer Hackerism
Pekka Himanen
Now it came to pass that Microsoft had waxed great and might
y among the Microchip Corporations; mightier than any of the
Mainframe Corporations before it, it had waxed. And Gates’
heart was hardened, and he swore unto his Customers and the
ir Engineers the words of this curse: "Children of von Neuma
nn, hear me. IBM and the Mainframe Corporations bound thy fo
refathers with grave and perilous Licenses, such that ye cri
ed unto the spirits of Turing and von Neumann for deliveranc
e. Now I say unto ye: I am greater than any Corporation befo
re me. Will I loosen your Licenses? Nay, I will bind thee wi
th Licenses twice as grave and ten times more perilous than
my forefathers. . . . I will capture and enslave thee as no
generation has been enslaved before. And wherefore will ye c
rye then unto the spirits of Turing, and von Neumann, and Mo
ore? They cannot hear ye. I am become a greater Power than t
hey. Ye shall cry only unto me, and shall live by my mercy a
nd my wrath. I am the Gates of Hell; I hold the portal to MS
NBC and the keys to the Blue Screen of Death. Be ye afraid;
be ye greatly afraid; serve only me, and live."1
The Gospel of Tux
So opens The Gospel According to Tux, a humorous hacker text
that contrasts the closed software development model repres
ented by Microsoft with the open development model represent
ed by Linux and other hacker projects (Tux is the name of Li
nux’s penguin mascot). The hacker software’s openness mean
s that hackers publish the source code of their programs and
permit all others to use, test, and develop it.
The hackers’ open-source model or hacker ethic is very simi
lar to the scientific ethic, which also emphasizes open crea
tivity. Accordingly, The Gospel According to Tux elevates to
heroic status the researchers who openly shared their findi
ngs while creating the theoretical foundation for the comput
er, chief among them Alan Turing and John von Neumann. Optim
istically, The Gospel According to Tux goes on to relate how
Torvalds revives this spirit in the world of computers:
Now in those days there was in the land of Helsinki a young
scholar named Linus the Torvald. Linus was a devout man, a d
isciple of RMS [Richard Stallman, another famous hacker] and
mighty in the spirit of Turing, von Neumann and Moore. One
day as he was meditating on the Architecture, Linus fell int
o a trance and was granted a vision. And in the vision he sa
w a great Penguin, serene and well-favoured, sitting upon an
ice floe eating fish. And at the sight of the Penguin Linus
was deeply afraid, and he cried unto the spirits of Turing,
von Neumann and Moore for an interpretation of the dream. A
nd in the dream the spirits of Turing, von Neumann and Moore
answered and spoke unto him, saying, "Fear not, Linus, most
beloved hacker. You are exceedingly cool and froody. The gr
eat Penguin which you see is an Operating System which you s
hall create and deploy unto the earth. The ice floe is the e
arth and all the systems thereof, upon which the Penguin sha
ll rest and rejoice at the completion of its task. And the f
ish on which the Penguin feeds are the crufty Licensed code
bases which swim beneath all the earth’s systems. The Pengu
in shall hunt and devour all that is crufty, gnarly and boga
cious; all code which wriggles like spaghetti, or is infeste
d with blighting creatures, or is bound by grave and perilou
s Licenses shall it capture. And in capturing shall it repli
cate, and in replicating shall it document, and in documenta
tion shall it bring freedom, serenity and most cool froodine
ss to the earth and all who code therein.
Linux has arguably taken the open-source model or hacker eth
ic furthest so far. Still, spiritually it is the continuatio
n of a long hacker tradition which started at MIT, where som
e students began to call themselves "hackers" at the beginni
ng of the 1960s (the word itself naturally existed before, b
ut they started to use it as anme for people who "program en
thusiastically").2
It is important to see that our network society was not buil
t only by enterprises and governments. Hackers played a cruc
ial role in the creation of the foremost symbols of our time
: the Internet and the Web (which together can be called "th
e Net"), and the personal computer, and much of the software
used for running them. Since the media nowadays tend to giv
e the impression that progress depends on enterprises listed
on the NASDAQ and on governmental information-society strat
egies, it is useful to briefly review the hackers’ role in
the development of the network society. Because the main pur
pose of this brief history is to counter the dominant image,
the presentation does not try to be a comprehensive list of
all important hacker creations and hackers (which number in
the hundreds), but selects some of the most influential exa
mples as a balance to the picture of our time.
The History of Unix
We can start with Linux, on which a significant part of the
Net is currently run. Linux did not appear out of nowhere an
d not through Linus Torvalds alone: in tune with the hacker
spirit, the Linux network based its project -- the creation
of a Unix-like operating system -- on three older and well-k
nown Unix hacker projects. The first one of these was the or
iginal Unix, which was created by hacker Ken Thompson in 196
9 after he left the University of California at Berkeley for
AT&T’s Bell Laboratories. Dennis Ritchie, who created the
C language for developing Unix, had an equally significant p
art in its birth.3 As a former Berkleyite, Thompson in subse
quent years collaborated a great deal with the BSD Unix proj
ect that had been started by hacker Bill Joy in Berkeley in
1977 (BSD = Berkeley Software Distribution).4 This collabora
tion worked well until 1979, which was when the telephone gi
ant AT&T decided to turn Unix into a commercial product.
The third hacker project leading to Linux was the GNU projec
t begun in 1983 by Richard Stallman at MIT’s AI Lab in stro
ng reaction to the commercialization of operating systems. O
n October 27, 1983, Stallman sent a message to the newsgroup
s net.unix-wizards and net.usoft telling that "Starting this
Thanksgiving I am going to write a complete Unix-compatible
software system called GNU (for Gnu’s Not Unix), and give
it away free to everyone who can use it. Contributions of ti
me, money, programs and equipment are greatly needed."5 A li
ttle later, Stallman expanded this original message into an
entire hacker manifesto, "The GNU Manifesto" (1985). The bes
t known creations of the GNU project are Emacs, an editor fa
vored by many hackers, and GCC, a C compiler that has been v
ery important to the development of Linux (Torvalds himself
says: "the portability of Linux is very much tied to the fac
t that GCC is ported to major chip architectures"6).
Typically, Linux is used as a kernel for a much larger syste
m that includes also many GNU and BSD programs. Altogether,
the history of Unix and its culmination, Linux, has realized
in an exemplary fashion what Thompson and Ritchie were hono
red for with the ACM Turing Award in 1983: "The genius of th
e UNIX system is its framework, which enables programmers to
stand on the work of others."7 Linux is a hacker network bu
ilt on top of hacker networks.
Even though Linux started out from older hacker projects, it
s mode of realization was clearly more dependent on the Inte
rnet than any of its predecessors.8 Torvalds started working
on Linux in 1991 while he was a student at Helsinki Univers
ity. After developing an interest in the problems of operati
ng systems, Torvalds imported into his home computer the Uni
x-like Minix system written by Dutch professor Andrew Tanenb
aum, and by studying and at first using it as a developmenta
l framework proceeded to design his own operating system.9
An essential feature of Torvalds’ work was that he did not
go it alone with his computer but involved others in his pro
ject from the very beginning. On August 25, 1991 Linus was r
eady to post a message to comp.os.minix with the subject lin
e "What would you like to see most in minix?" in which he an
nounced that he was "doing a (free) operating system."10 He
received several ideas in reply and even some promises for h
elp in testing the program. The operating system’s first ve
rsion was released on a Finnish server nic.funet.fi as sourc
e code free to all in September 1991.11 (The system received
the name "Linux" from the server’s administrator, Ari Lemm
ke. Linus’ first name for it was "Freix" as a combination o
f "freak" and "Unix.")
The next, improved version was available from the same serve
r as soon as early October. After its publication, Linus ext
ended an even more direct invitation to hackers to join him
in the development of the new system. On October 5, 1991 he
posted the message: "Do you pine for the nice days of minix-
1.1, when men were men and wrote their own device drivers?"
In the same message he asked for tips about information sour
ces, and finished the message with a yet more practical invi
tation to hackers to join in the development.12
Development advanced quickly. Within a month of the project’
s publication, other programmers had joined in, and Linux st
arted to be disseminated by two new servers. Since then, the
Linux network has grown at an incredible rate and amazing c
reative pace. Thousands of programmers (including luminaries
like Alan Cox) have participated in Linux’s development, a
nd their numbers are growing steadily. Linux has expanded in
to a full-fledged operating system, gradually assimilating m
any programs created in the GNU and BSD projects. There are
millions of users, and their number, too, is growing. Anyone
can participate in its development, and anyone is welcome t
o use it freely.13
The Internet and the Web
The second important chapter in the history of computer hack
erism came with the birth of the Internet. Its true beginnin
gs also date back to 1969.14 The U.S. Department of Defense’
s research unit ARPA (Advanced Research Projects Agency) pla
yed an important role, through the Information Processing Te
chniques Office, in setting up the Internet’s predecessor,
the Arpanet. This was thanks largely to the lasting influenc
e of the Office’s director, Joseph C. R. Licklider, who had
first written of his visions for a computer network in an a
rticle "Man-Computer Symbiosis," published in 1960. However,
the extent and significance of the government’s input is u
sually exaggerated. In Inventing the Internet (1999), the mo
st thorough history of the Internet to date, Janet Abbate de
monstrates how the appointment of former university research
ers to managerial positions caused the Net to develop accord
ing to self-organizing principles common to scientific pract
ice. As a result, the most significant portion of that devel
opment was soon directed by the Network Working Group, a clu
ster of hackers like Vinton Cerf culled from a talented grou
p of university students. Cerf’s comment gives a good indic
ation of the freedom ARPA granted them: "We were just rank a
mateurs, and we were expecting that some authority would fin
ally come along and say, ’Here’s how we are going to do it
.’ And nobody ever came along."15
The Network Working Group that created key Arpanet protocols
operated on the open model: anyone was allowed to contribut
e ideas, which were then developed collectively. The solutio
ns were published from the very beginning as RFCs (request f
or comment), so that others could use, test, and develop the
m. This model was followed by the International Network Work
ing Group that Cerf organized as its successor in 1972. In t
he same open spirit, this group (especially Cerf, Bob Kahn,
Bob Metcalfe, Gerard Lelann, Jon Postel, and Danny Cohen) cr
eated Internet’s key protocols (especially TCP/IP = Transmi
ssion Control Protocol and Internet Protocol, which determin
e how information is transmitted on the Internet).
Finally, in the early eighties, ARPA officially disengaged i
tself from the Internet. Since then, an even stronger self-s
elected group of hackers has been central to the Net’s deve
lopment: the International Network Working Group’s successo
r, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), which was fou
nded in 1986. Scott Bradner, one of the world’s leading exp
erts on the Internet infrastructure, defines its task: "Apar
t from TCP/IP itself [which was developed by the INWG], all
of the basic technology of the Internet was developed or has
been refined in the IETF."16 Presently, the IETF functions
under the umbrella of the Internet Society, founded in 1992
on the initiative of Cerf. All development has been and stil
l is conducted openly sharing ideas and source code. The Int
ernet still does not have any central directorate that guide
s its development; rather, its technology is developed by an
open community of hackers. This community discusses ideas,
and they become "standards" only if the larger Internet comm
unity thinks they are good and starts to use them. Reflectin
g on this development, Abbate sums up her account on the Int
ernet’s progress by noting that "there seems to have been n
o corporate participation in the design of the Internet. Lik
e its predecessor [the Arpanet], the Internet was designed,
informally and with little fanfare, by a self-selected group
of experts."17
When one considers the successfulness of the Internet’s dev
elopmental model, it is worth remembering that TCP/IP was no
t the only suggestion of its time for a "network of networks
." The two biggest standardization organizations CCITT and O
SI had their own official standards (X.25 and ISO). On the b
asis of Abbate’s research, it seems that one of the main re
asons why these traditional standardization organizations’
protocols did not succeed was the significantly more closed
nature of these organizations’ operation.18
The same hacker-inspired history repeats itself in the World
Wide Web, which began with Tim Berners-Lee’s, a British ha
cker’s, vision of a worldwide hypertext: "Suppose I could p
rogram my computer to create a space in which anything could
be linked to anything," he wrote about his dream (which he
initially called Enquire).19 Berners-Lee began the realizati
on of his vision in 1990 while working at the particle physi
cs research center CERN in Switzerland.
Berners-Lee was by no means the first to dream of a global h
ypertext. The best-known visionary of this idea is Ted Nelso
n, the inventor of the term "hypertext" in 1960’s. In his b
est-known work on the subject, Literary Machines (1981), Nel
son for his part acknowledges his indebtedness to one of the
most influential representatives of American information pr
ocessing technology, Vannevar Bush. As early as the 1940s, B
ush came up with the idea of a hypertext device he called Me
mex ("As We May Think", 1945). Douglas Engelbart, active in
the development of the Internet, presented his oNLine System
in San Francisco in 1968 based on the ideas of his 1962 art
icle "Augmenting Human Intellect. A Conceptual Framework": i
t contained many of the same elements now found in the Web,
including the graphical interface and the mouse, which were
partly developed for this system. (Even it was not the very
first working hypertext system -- Adries van Dam’s team, wh
ich built a hypertext system at Brown University in 1967, cl
aims that honor).20 When Apple published its HyperCard progr
am in 1987, after first borrowing the ideas of a graphical i
nterface and mouse in its 1984 Macintosh, it became the firs
t widely used hypertext system. Berners-Lee says, however, t
hat he was not familiar with these visions when he first sta
rted to developed his idea in 1980. However, he learned abou
t Nelson’s ideas in 1988 when he read more about hypertext
and so in his 1989 idea paper "Information Management", he r
efers to Nelson explicitly.21 Also, Berners-Lee implemented
the first version of the World Wide Web on a NeXT computer,
which was built by the company that Steve Jobs founded after
Apple, and which continued Apple’s tradition of advanced h
ypertext capabilites.22
Although Berners-Lee was not the first one to imagine a worl
d-wide hypertext, he was the first one to make that dream tr
ue by working in true hacker style. From the beginning, he p
ublished his programs as open-source code. In his book Weavi
ng the Web (1999), Berners-Lee describes the way other devel
opers (like Robert Cailliau) gradually joined in to work on
the code: "interested people on the Internet provided the fe
edback, stimulation, ideas, source-code contributions, and m
oral support that would have been hard to find locally. The
people of the Internet built the Web, in true grassroots fas
hion."23 The spread of the Web has also been facilitated by
the fact that the source code of every Web page is always op
en to view, and as a consequence, Web page makers have been
able to learn from each other in order to further develop id
eas.
The breakthrough of the Web for the masses occurred in 1993
when Marc Andreessen, a student at the National Center for S
upercomputing Applications (NCSA) finished Mosaic, a graphic
al browser for PCs, whose source code was available.24 By Oc
tober, 1994, the evolution of the Web had already become so
accelerated that hackers under the aegis of Berners-Lee deci
ded to organize themselves into the informal World Wide Web
Consortium, on the model of the Internet Society. Programs c
reated by the consortium are always published as open-source
code.25
At the time of its breakthrough, the Web had direct competit
ors, from which it differed to its advantage in its social m
odel. Until 1994, the World Wide Web was essentially just on
e of many ideas for new utilizations of the Internet, and it
was by no means clear which one of these would spearhead it
s evolution (nor was it even obvious that any of them would
significantly influence the Internet). The most powerful com
peting idea was the Gopher information system developed by t
he University of Minnesota. Gopher "hit the wall" in the spr
ing of 1993, when the decision was made to limit its free us
e. Berners-Lee describes this event: "This was an act of tre
ason in the academic community and the Internet community. E
ven if the university never charged anyone a dime, the fact
that the school had announced it was reserving the right to
charge people for the use of the gopher protocols meant it h
ad crossed the line."26 Berners-Lee made sure that CERN woul
d allow him to keep the development of the Web entirely open
. Gopher’s fate was finally suffered also by Andreessen’s
Mosaic, when he went on to found Netscape with Jim Clark.27
Netscape closed the source code, which may have been its mos
t fatal error in its lost fight with Microsoft Internet Expl
orer as there was no way that it could have won the big Micr
osoft in its own closed-source game. Netscape has reissued i
ts browser again as open source code in 1998 (called Mozilla
), but it is uncertain if this helps anymore because the bro
wser is already such a monster that it is very difficult for
others to join in at this point.28
But there are many other succesful open-source implementatio
ns of the openly developed Internet and Web standards. The N
CSA Web server, developed by the student Rob McCool and othe
rs, had a similar explosive impact on the server side than M
osaic had on the user side. McCool eventually also joined Ne
tscape, but this part of the hacker heritage was saved bette
r because the so-called Apache hackers, such as the former B
erkeley student Brian Behlendorf, started to develop the NCS
A server further from the very beginning as open-source code
. In fact, on the serverl level, hacker programs play such a
n essential role in the Net’s running that it largely relie
s on the availability of open-source software. Keith Porterf
ield summarizes the Net’s dependence on hackers by expressi
ng what would happen in practice if the hacker programs woul
d be retracted from the technical core of them (my brief com
ments on the reasons in parentheses):
Over half the Web sites on the Internet would disappear (bec
ause about 2/3 of the Web sites are run by Apache)
Usenet news groups would also go away (because they are supp
orted by the hacker-created INN program)
But that wouldn’t matter, because e-mail wouldn’t be worki
ng (because most e-mail transmissions are made through the h
acker-created Sendmail program)
You’ll be typing "199.201.243.200" into your browser instea
d of "www.netaction.org" (because the Internet’s plain lang
uage "address list" depends on the hacker-created BIND progr
am)29
INN (InterNetNews) is the creation of hackers like Rich Salz
.30 Sendmail was originally developed by a Berkeley student,
Eric Allman in 1979.31 BIND stands for Berkeley Internet Na
me Domain and it was originally developed by the Berkeley st
udents Douglas Terry, Mark Painter, David Riggle and Songnia
n Zhou.32 All of these hacker projects are presently carried
on by the Internet Sofware Consortium (although its involve
ment in Sendmail takes place indirectly through its support
to the Sendmail Consortium). It was this same hacker spirit
that informed also the decision of the inventors of Internet
routers, Sandra Lerner and Leonard Bosack (with others), to
avail their source code with the routers, even after they f
ounded their company, Cisco Systems.33
The Personal Computer
Although at the moment the Internet and the Web dominate our
collective imagination, their mass breakthrough would not h
ave been possible, of course, without the creation of that o
ther remarkable invention of our time, the personal computer
. Even though we now mostly think of personal computers as t
he products of large computer firms, they, too, were first t
hought up by individual hackers. The personal computer’s id
eational history goes back to the MIT’s Tech Model Railroad
Club hackers who pioneered interactive computing.34 In thei
r time in the late 50s and early 60s, the computer field was
still dominated by IBM’s model of batch-processed mainfram
e computers (like 704, 709, and 7090), in which programmers
did not have direct access to the computer but had to receiv
e permission to pass their programs on to a special operator
. It could take days to receive the results.
In contrast to to this method, the MIT hackers favored inter
active computing on DEC PDP minicomputers, in which the prog
rammer could write his program directly into the computer, s
ee the results, and immediately make desirable corrections.
In terms of social organization, the difference is great: in
an interaction that eliminates the ’operator,’ individual
s can employ technology in a more liberating manner. This el
imination of the operators, the high priesthood of the compu
ter world, is comparable in experience to the elimination of
telephone operators in the history of the telecommunication
s. It meant a freeing up of direct exchange between individu
als. Thus the MIT hackers turned minicomputers into their "p
ersonal computers."
The MIT hackers also programmed the first ever computer game
, in which a user could for the first time experience the po
ssibilities of the interactive graphical interface. In Steve
Russell’s 1962 Spacewar two vessels armed with torpedos, g
uided by controls designed by the club, joined battle in out
er space. Peter Samson added a planetary background to the g
ame, called "Expensive Planetarium" because its purpose was
to show the stars in exactly the same positions they could h
ave been seen by looking out the window -- but much more exp
ensively, as the user time of the computer was very valuable
back then. Anyone was allowed to copy the game, and its sou
rce code was available. While developing computer graphics t
echnology, the game also marked the beginning of the subsequ
ent computer game industry through companies like Nolan Bush
nell’s Atari. Currently, the game industry’s sales figures
equal those of the movie industry.35
The actual breakthrough of the modern personal computer occu
rred in the more political atmosphere of the San Francisco B
ay Area in the 1970s.36 Central to it was the Homebrew Compu
ter Club, a group of hackers that held its first meeting on
March 5, 1975 in Gordon French’s garage in Menlo Park. Thro
ugh its predecessor, the People’s Computer Company (which d
espite its name was not a business enterprise but rather a n
on-profit organization), the group had connections to other
parts of the Sixties’ counterculture and favored its princi
ple of giving power to the people (movements advancing freed
om of speech, the status of women and homosexuals, the envir
onment, and animals were strong in the Bay Area).
Before the Homebrew Computer Club, French was active in the
PCC (People’s Computer Company, which was not a real compan
y but rather a charitable organization). PCC’s founder Bob
Albrecht promoted the use of computers in the fight against
bureaucratic powers-that-be. The cover of the first issue of
the PCC’s journal, October 1972, carried this text: "Compu
ters are mostly used against people instead of for people. U
sed to control people instead of to FREE them. Time to chang
e all that -- we need a People’s Computer Company." One att
endee at the PCC’s Wednesday night meetings was Lee Felsens
tein, a student at the University of Berkeley (who had also
participated in the Free Speech Movement and the student occ
upation of a university building in December 1964). Felsenst
ein’s goal was to provide people everywhere with the free u
se of computers. According to his proposal, this would provi
de "a communication system which allows people to make conta
ct with each other on the basis of mutually expressed intere
sts, without having to cede judgment to third parties." In a
Rolling Stone article in December 1972, Stewart Brand summe
d up the spirit of the PCC: "Ready or not, computers are com
ing to the people. That’s good news, maybe the best since p
sychedelics."37 Another participant in PCC meetings, Ted Nel
son, voiced this view most emphatically in his self-publishe
d book Computer Lib (1974): "COMPUTER POWER TO THE PEOPLE! D
OWN WITH CYBERCRUD [a term coined by Nelson to mean "putting
things over on people using computers"]!"38
Both Albrecht and Felsenstein moved on from the PCC to the H
omebrew Computer Club, the latter acting as its discussion m
oderator at a later time (Nelson also visited the club but c
ould not keep pace with its progress into advanced technolog
y). In 1976, using the information shared freely within the
club, Steve Wozniak built the first personal computer for th
e use of people without engineering degrees, the Apple I. In
accordance with the hacker ethic, Wozniak freely distribute
d blueprints of his computer and published sections of his p
rogram. Wozniak’s hacker-created computer inspired the larg
er personal-computer revolution, the consequences of which a
re everywhere around us. The irony in that later development
is that Apple fell behind in its competition with the PC co
ncept IBM launched in 1981 largely because, after its corpor
atization led by Steve Jobs, Apple ended up with a closed ar
chitecture. By conrast, IBM’s PC succeeded because its open
architecture made it possible for others to join in. Curren
tly, IBM -- the old enemy of hackers -- is even a strong pro
ponent of the open-source software like Linux and Apache.
The PC-based Net as a Social Medium
Originally, governments and the corporations saw computers a
s programmable calculators. To fully appreciate Wozniak’s a
ccomplishment, we must remember that the computers preceding
it had often been machines the size of refrigerators that h
ad to be kept in special climate-controlled rooms. The CEOs
of the world’s largest computer firms did not believe in a
future for personal computers, expressing opinions such as "
I think there is a world market for maybe five computers" (T
homas Watson, Chairman of IBM, 1943). These predictions migh
t even have come true if Wozniak had not succeeded in "socia
lizing" the computer (before founding Apple with Jobs, Wozni
ak also offered his computer to Hewlett-Packard, which did n
ot get its social point).
Similarily, the original governmental vision of the Arpanet
was to share computing resources. One early paper expressed
the vision in this way: "Within a local community, time shar
ing systems already permit the sharing of software resources
. An effective network would eliminate the size and distance
limitations on such communities."39 It was a lack of unders
tanding of the Net’s social potential that also led AT&T to
reject the offer for being the Net’s operator in 1972.
The hackers transformed computers and the Net into a social
medium that was not part of either the governmental nor corp
orate plans. Email was invented in July 1970 by Ray Tomlinso
n, who is also the one to thank (or blame) for the @-symbol
in email addresses.40 Abbate describes the consequence of th
is unexpected innovation: "ARPANET users came to rely on ema
il in their day-to-day activities, and before long email had
eclipsed all other network applications in volume of traffi
c."41 From then on, e-mail has been the most popular use of
the Net.
Later on, hackers made other social inventions that were ori
ginally independent of the Net but soon came parts of its fa
bric. In 1978 two Chicago students, Ward Christensen and Ran
dy Suess, created the first Bulletin Board System, which mad
e electronic discussions possible, and in 1983, a California
n hacker Tom Jennings networked the BBSs through his Fidonet
. Whereas Fidonet was the personal computer world’s telepho
ne-line-based solution, Tom Truscott, Jim Ellis, and Steve B
ellovin at Duke and the University of North Carolina develop
ed the Unix-world’s Usenet news groups.42 In 1988, Jarkko O
ikarinen, a student at the University of Oulu in Finland, de
signed the real-time conversation environment or the chat.43

The hacker ideal of openness influenced also strongly the na
ture of these communication forms. They all implement the id
ea of being able to express views freely. To ensure this, Ca
lifornia libertarian John Gilmore, who is best-known for his
slogan "The Net treats censorship as damage and routes arou
nd it," cofounded in 1987 the alt(ernative) newsgroup domain
, where anyone can start a new group and discussion is total
ly uncensored.44 Gilmore has also started (with Tim May and
Eric Hughes) a group that develops encryption technology to
secure the privacy of one’s free expressions, the Cypherpun
ks. Its goals are summed up in Hughes’ "A Cypherpunk’s Man
ifesto" of 1993:
We must defend our own privacy if we expect to have any. We
must come together and create systems which allow anonymous
transactions to take place. People have been defending their
own privacy for centuries with whispers, darkness, envelope
s, closed doors, secret handshakes, and couriers. The techno
logies of the past did not allow for strong privacy, but ele
ctronic technologies do. We the Cypherpunks are dedicated to
building anonymous systems. We are defending our privacy wi
th cryptography, with anonymous mail forwarding systems, wit
h digital signatures, and with electronic money.45
Cypherpunks are joined by other hackers in this goal: for ex
ample, a Finnish hacker Tatu Yl鰊en wrote the SSH (Secure Sh
ell) program for encrypting one’s sensitive Net connections
, which currently continues as the OpenSSH project.46 In 199
3, another Finnish hacker Johan Helsingius created an anonym
ous remailer that made it possible to send emails or newsgro
up messages anonymously so one could express views without t
heir being in any way traceable. He describes the need for s
uch a server: "These remailers have made it possible for peo
ple to discuss very sensitive matters, such as domestic viol
ence, school bullying or human rights issues anonymously and
confidentially on the Internet." In another context, he add
s: "Where you’re dealing with minorities -- racial, politic
al, sexual, whatever -- you always find cases in which peopl
e belonging to a minority would like to discuss things that
are important to them without having to identify who they ar
e."47
Overall, the history of computer hackerism has shown what a
great impact people who "program enthusiastically" and belie
ve in the hacker ethic (a hacker’s definition in the "jargo
n file") can have. This history is witness to the significan
ce of the hacker ethic’s driving value: "The belief that in
formation-sharing is a powerful positive good, and that it i
s an ethical duty of hackers to share their expertise by wri
ting free software and facilitating access to information an
d to computing resources wherever possible" (the definition
of the hacker ethic in the "jargon file").48
更详细的内容请访问：http://www.hackerethic.org/writings/hack
erhistory.shtml

--
花开了，然后又谢了；星光璀璨，也终会消失。
这地球、太阳、银河，甚至这庞大的宇宙，也有消亡之时。
人的一生，与这些相比，简直就像是，刹那间的事。
在这刹那间，人们出生、欢笑、流泪、战斗、受伤、喜悦、悲伤、恨谁、爱谁，
一切都是，刹那间的邂逅。最后，都会归入死的永眠……
※ 来源:·饮水思源 bbs.sjtu.edu.cn·[FROM: 202.120.15.34]

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