The hackers found splendor and elegance in the conventionally dry sciences of math and electronics. They saw programming as a form of artistic expression, and the computer was the instrument of their art. Their desire to dissect and understand wasn't intended to demystify artistic endeavors, but was simply a way to achieve a greater appreciation of them. These knowledge-driven values would eventually be called the Hacker Ethic: the appreciation of logic as an art form, and the promotion of the free flow of information, surmounting conventional boundaries and restrictions, for the simple goal of better understanding the world. This is not new; the Pythagoreans in ancient Greece had a similar ethic and subculture, despite the lack of computers.
They saw beauty in mathematics and discovered many core concepts in geometry. That thirst for knowledge and its beneficial by-products would continue on through history, from the Pythagoreans to Ada Lovelace to Alan Turing to the hackers of the MIT modelrailroad club. The progression of computationalscience would continue even further, through to Richard Stallman and Steve Wozniak. These hackers have brought us modern operating systems, programming languages, personal computers, and many other technological advances that are used every day.
