• jbrjake
    23·
    6 days ago

    Is this an actual artifact? I never ran across this when I researched the origin of “Information wants to be free”… and it’s a word for word match to how Steven Levy later described the hacker ethos of the era in his own words in his book Hackers. I’m wondering if someone just rendered it out to look like it came from an old typewriter, and that context got lost as people shared it.

    • atomicbocks@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      10·
      6 days ago

      I was also curious and I can find no reference to this wording existing beyond the book, so my guess is this is bullshit.

      While the word hacker is believed to come from MIT nobody seems to know exactly when in the 50s it came into use and was largely used for describing a specific type of prankster rather than what we know if for today. I highly doubt that ‘modern’ hacker culture would have been established by 1962 anyway.

      • fartsparkles
        3·
        6 days ago

        Hacker was a term for creative and expert programmers (and all the hacking away at the keys they did on their keyboards).

    • BilSababOPM
      21·
      6 days ago

      unlikely, probably just a later day stylized bit. or very well prompted ai-gen