Lee Felsenstein nació en 1945 en Philadephia. Como Greenblatt con los hackers del MIT, su aportación a los hardware hackers fue constante tanto como hacker como activista para promover las comunidades y difundir la ética hacker.
Desde pequeño, se interesó por la electrónica porque fue el primer ámbito donde pudo superar a su hermano mayor.
Se identificó con el héroe del libro de ciencia ficción “Revolt in 2100” ii de Robert Heinlein que se opone a un poder tiránico.
“Secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny”
Después de licenciarse en Electrical Engineering en la universidad de Berkeley, entró en la Nasa. Pero después de dos meses, no pudó seguir porque un agente de seguridad descubrió que sus padres eran comunistas.
“So there I was, ejected from Paradise”
Desesperado, volvió a Berkeley donde la estructura descentralizada del Free Speech Movement le inspiró. Se implicó en el movimiento aunque no en sus aspectos más sociales :
Lee shied away from close human contact, especially with women.
He did not bathe regularly, and washed his unfashionably short hair perhaps once a month. He did not take drugs. He did not engage in any sex, let alone all the free sex that came with free speech.
“I was afraid of women and had no way of dealing with them”
“I had some proscription in my personality against having fun. I was not allowed to have fun. The fun was in my work … It was as if my way of asserting my potency was to be able to build things that worked, and other people liked.”
Su objetivo era hackear y democratizar la ética hacker para que todos puedan sentir su magia.
“The industrial approach is grim and doesn’t work : the design motto is ‘Design by Geniuses for Use by Idiots’ and the watchword for dealing with the untrained and unwashed public is KEEP THEIR HANDS OFF! … The convivial approach I suggest would rely on the user’s ability to learn about and gain some control over the tool. The user will have to spend some amount of time probing around inside the equipment, and we will have to make this possible and not fatal to either the equipment or the person.”
Para democratizar el acceso a los ordenadores, creó la comunidad Community Memory en Berkeley, participó en la comunidad PCC People Computer’s Company, y lideró la comunidad Homebrew Computer Club, donde participó también Steve Wozniak.
“We reinforces each other”
“We provided a support structure for each other. We bought each other’s products. We covered each other’s asses, in effect. There we were – the industrial structure was paying no attention to us. Yet we had people who knew as much as anyone else knew about this aspect of technology, because it was so new. We coud run wild, and we did.”
Gastó todo su dinero en lograr su objetivo de difundir la ética hacker y llevar los ordenadores a la gente. Por eso crea primero el Tom Swift Terminal
Bob Marsh “We didn’t pay attention to profits or management of almost any kind.”
He had never been an official employee, and his royalties on the Sol eventually totaled over one hundred thousand dollars
Most of the money went toward the new incarnation of Community Memory
Después de gastarlo todo, sin dinero, Steve Dompier se le propuso crear otro ordenador, el Sol, un competidor del Apple II.
Su deseo de simbiosis con el ordenador es parecido al de Greenblatt:
“I was going to be an invisible servant. Part of this machine.”
Like computer programs, digital designs “are the best pictures of minds you can get”
“There are things I can tell about people from hardware designs I see.”
“[The magic] will always be in there to a certain extent. You talk about deus ex-machina, well, we’re talking about deus in machina. You start by thinking there’s a god in the box. And then you find there isn’t anything in the box. You put the god in the box.”
Pero a la diferencia con los hackers del MIT, no esta interesado en :
- La inteligencia artificial
“Anyone who’s been around artificial intelligence is likely to be a hopeless case”
“They’re so far removed from reality that they cannot deal with the real world.” - La meritocracia
Solo quiere democratizar el ordenador para todos, y no solo centrarse en los mejores.