Reading 04: Nerds and Hackers

 Despite a 20-year gap between Steve Levy’s Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution and Paul Graham’s series of essays on hackers, their writings are remarkably similar. They use different language, different ideas, and different lived experiences to describes “hackers” in their time, yet both works clearly describe the same kind of person.

In “Why Nerds Are Unpopular”, Graham describes his upbringing and how he felt as a “nerd” in school. He found that nerds usually shared the same story: They were intelligent, unpopular, and had a certain drive for knowledge. While most kids spent a lot of time trying to climb the social ladder, nerds typically cared more for learning and exploring. Nerds did not necessarily want to be unpopular, but their other interests were always more important. These characteristics are the exact story that Levy relays in Hackers for many of the kids at MIT and Stanford. These notorious early hackers all describe how they took apart electronics, dug in dirt, and did just about anything else to entertain themselves and learn. By describing upbringing and younger motivations, Graham and Levy both capture what truly inspires hackers: a drive to learn, solve problems, and push boundaries in ways not intended. Graham and Levy even both detail the mischievous nature of hackers, citing times where MIT students snuck into labs and nerds/freaks smoked marijuana all for the purpose of disobeying authority. While their exact definitions vary, both authors describe the same motivations, personalities, and intelligence for hackers young and old.

I found Graham’s modern view of hackers to be very relatable. His description of a nerdy, unpopular, but succeeding kid really hits home with how I felt throughout middle and high school. It is unflattering, yes, but it is the truth. The awkward social interactions, lonely weekends, and recesses in the library played a major role in forming who I am today and how I developed within computer science. Of course, this fits right in with Levy’s descriptions of awkward, semi-gross hackers as well. Levy’s instance of a 12-year-old child who joined the TX-0 community at MIT is a perfect example of the kids who do and will fit this profile. What kind of kid would spend his precious free time in a computer lab punching cards or flipping switches instead of hanging out with friends? A future hacker, obviously.

Graham’s ideas on hackers motivate me to pursue hacking and computer science even further. I felt that I was inexperienced and stood out when I first entered the CS program at ND, but the over time I came to realize that I fit right in with just about every single other CS student. The way Graham describes hackers on a more personal level gives me the same feeling of comfort I had to gain after a few years in the program. There is a great deal of confidence that can comes from knowing that despite my own struggles, every other hacker has stood in the same spot.

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