Description:

Society regarded them as nerds - uncool prodigies who spoke in strange jargon and seemed interested only in the arcane culture of computers. Yet in their own minds they were explorers, risk-takers, even artists. They understood what we did not - that the future would be built upon the free exchange of information. They were the Hackers. Here are the true hackers at MIT's Tech Model Railroad Club, who formed a high-tech Valhalla based on the hacker ethic of digital liberation ... the hardware hackers like Steve Wozniak, who designed a computer to impress his friends and wound up forming Apple Computer ... the "phreaking" of Captain Crunch, who discovered in a cereal box a secret access into the phone company's long-distance lines ... the software artists who create million-dollar computer games. America's most unlikely heroes, armed with keyboards and pocket protectors. --