Hackers never were part of the mainstream establishment, but their current reputation as villains of cyberspace is a far cry from the early days when, first and foremost, they were seen as ardent if quirky programmers, capable of near-miraculous, unorthodox feats of machine manipulation. True, their dedication bordered on fanaticism, and their living habits bordered on the unsavory. But the shift in popular perception to hackers as deviants and criminals is important not only because it affects the hackers themselves and the extraordinary culture that has grown around them (fascinating as a subject in its own right), but because it reflects shifts in the development, governance, and meaning of the new information technology. These shifts should be questioned and resisted. They unfairly cast hackers in a disreputable light and, more important, they deny the rest of us a political opportunity.

In Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution, Steven Levy traces the roots of ev...

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