The First Builders: The Untold Story of the People Who Built Computing Culture

This book is about the men and women who built not just the hardware and the software, but the very idea of what it means to be a computer user, a programmer, and a digital citizen. It's about the MIT hackers, the Homebrew Computer Club, the ENIAC programmers, the Unix philosophers, and the network weavers who created the culture that now defines modern life. These are the forgotten pioneers who built the foundation.

Inside, you'll discover:

• The original hackers at MIT and the birth of the hacker ethic

• The women who wired the world and programmed the ENIAC

• The gospel of free information and the GNU Project

• The cathedral and the bazaar of open source development

• The Unix philosophers and the tools that built the internet

• The demoscene and the art of digital expression

• The legacy of the first builders and how it continues today

This book is an attempt to give credit where credit is long overdue and to show that the culture of computing was not a natural phenomenon, but was built, carefully and deliberately, by the first builders.