Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution: 25th Anniversary Edition

I love the people this book is about, they are the closest thing I think I might have to human heroes. Author Steven Levy delivers with the perfect sub-title. Day-to-day it is lost on us where the technology we use comes from. We might (at most) worry about the manufacturing process, or even the trade in value or where to recycle an old device, but where did the iPhone really come from, why don't monitors flicker any more, is the current technological environment we find ourselves in the inevitable result of the laws of nature and discovery, or
was it shaped inexorably by the minds of a select few incredibly hard working and very bright young hackers in the 1960's to
1980's?

Hackers did it. Who built Apple computers, largest company in the world, hackers. Richest man in the world, a self-described hacker. Why do we have "word processors", video games, color screens... literally everything we enjoy today is only because a hacker was there, working night after night, alone on a problem until it was solved.So much of what hackers have innovated may seem so obvious that we can't image technology would have gone any other way, but the internet itself proves a perfect example of why Hackers should be your heroes if they are not already. In the beginning, Internets were closed and the mode was for a centralized database that was only accessible though a gatekeeper.

That would have been (that WAS) the internet, until a hacker Tim Berners-Lee hacked up a free "Web" accessible World Wide and for free.My point is not to convince to that Hackers should be our god-kings, appointed for life and voted in by fellow Hackers into the Hacker Ruling Elite, it is just that you should read this book. Hackers is amazing because the people it is about literally built from the ground up our current way of life and their stories are amazing. If in the future, after robots have taken all the jobs and the world is divided into the Gods and Useless it is the Hacker forefathers who will be worshiped as Gods of the Gods and demonized by the 99.9% as creators of the monstrous hell that they kick started way back in the early 1960's.