Author

Steven Levy

16 key ideas across 2 books, each explained in our own words.

Hackers

IDEA 1
Hackers shaped the computer revolution
Levy tells the story of the early hackers, programmers who loved computers for their own sake. He argues that their culture and values shaped the personal computer revolution. Their curiosity set the tone for later technology.
IDEA 2
It began at MIT
Levy describes the first hackers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the late 1950s and 1960s, including members of a model railroad club. They spent nights exploring early computers.
IDEA 3
Hackers shared an ethic
Levy describes the hacker ethic, a set of values including free access to computers, sharing information and judging people by skill rather than status. Levy shows how these ideas gave early computer culture its spirit of openness.

IDEA 1
Two students built a search engine
Levy describes how Larry Page and Sergey Brin, graduate students at Stanford, created a better way to search the web. Their PageRank method ranked pages by how many other pages linked to them, treating links like votes.
IDEA 2
Google built an engineering culture
Levy describes Google's culture, where engineers had great influence and were encouraged to work on ambitious projects. Data guided decisions. In Levy's account, the founders trusted talented engineers to follow their own ideas and measured many choices with numbers and tests.
IDEA 3
Don't be evil guided values
Google adopted the motto don't be evil, expressing its desire to act ethically. Levy explores how the company tried to live up to it. In Levy's account, the phrase set a high standard for the company, and employees sometimes used it to challenge its decisions.

Go deeper with Steven LevyAsk questions, argue with the ideas and practise using them, free.