“Like many other aspiring electronics geeks in the immediate
postwar era, Cramer and Fletcher’s imaginations had been enticed by
a book published in 1949 called “Giant Brains, or Machines That
Think.” Written by Edmund C. Berkeley, an expert in the then-infant
field of computing, “Giant Brains” was both a primer and a
manifesto.”
“In 1952, Berkeley walked the walk. He built his own computer,
Simon, considered by some historians to be the first “personal
computer,” and documented the process in a series of 13 articles
for Radio Electronics magazine. Cramer and Fletcher, demonstrating
a cavalier attitude towards proprietary information that would
become a calling card for do-it-yourself hackers in generations to
come, ripped the pages of schematics right out of copies of the
magazines at their local library. (As Cramer noted shamefacedly, 50
years later, “We had no duplicators in those days!”)”
“Dig under the surface of your average computer geek and you
will find a person in love with the idea of having a Giant Brain of
one’s own to play with. … From punch cards to Linux, hackers love
to tinker and share. Even Bill Gates can’t stop them. … It
doesn’t matter whether the tools of their trade are piles of
solenoids or copylefted compiler and debugger programs. Hackers
will stop at nothing in their drive to play with their Giant
Brains. If that means that along the way they’ll build the
Internet, unleash the personal computer industry and topple
Microsoft, well, so be it: They just want to have fun.”