Book review: Hackers - 25th Anniversary Edition

Twenty-five years ago the term 'hacker' didn't mean a cybercriminal, and the few who used it meant it as high praise.

When Hackers first came out in 1984, Steven Levy was documenting how thirty years of brilliant and eccentric geeks (who were more interested in bending technology to their will than in building businesses, or even in what computers can actually do) had somehow produced a personal computer revolution that was about to sweep into every home.

The original edition finished with a slightly mournful section on Richard Stallman as the (self-proclaimed) 'last of the true hackers'. The 25th Anniversary Edition updates the book with new material on Steve Wozniak, Mark Zuckerberg and tackles the question of whether hacking has a future. It's also a wonderful opportunity to see how much of the original hacker ethic has survived, and to wonder whether the early MIT hackers of the 50s and 60s would recognize anything of today's computing philosophy."

For more on this story, read Hackers - 25th Anniversary Edition on ZDNet UK